A Fox's Prey
by OhGreat
Summary: When Vice-Captain Matsumoto is forcibly transferred to Gin Ichimaru's squad as a third seat, she's ready to raise hell. Little does she realize, she's not fighting back very hard.
1. Recruitment Time

A Fox's Prey

Chapter 1

Recruitment Time

* * *

* * *

Matsumoto pressed her chin into an open palm. Good God, _this_ was not how she planned her Thursday nights. In fact, she wasn't sure Thursday nights were even in her jurisdiction anymore.

"In new…news, we lost two members this week." Nanao thumbed a piece of paper. "And one more this morning."

Week 62 of the Shinigami Women's Association was about as boring as Week 1 had been. Quite frankly, female issues were enthusiastically diverting for about ten minutes before the gossip started and the magazines came out. At times, the Association was more a slumber party than an organization, and who could expect anything else? Yachiru was their _president_.

Nanao, a bit bored herself, drummed a set of fingers against the podium she stood behind. "The fact of the matter is, ladies, our turnover rate is worse this month than last, and it's spiraling downward, I'm afraid."

No one else was very afraid, though. Losing members just meant you got a better seat.

"We should make attendance mandatory, then," Soi Fong suggested, yawning.

Matsumoto slid a heavy look in her direction. Soi Fong, devoted, slightly scary Soi Fong, skipped out on meetings twice a month and rarely did anything to suggest she actually wanted to be there.

Nanao looked annoyed. "We can't force people to join a club."

"Oh, I can."

"…Great." Nanao paused, reaching beneath the podium and pulling out several sheets of paper. "For those of us interested in less aggressive tactics, I've compiled some scouting papers for new recruits."

Matsumoto raised an eyebrow. _Don't tell me she actually expects us to find new members…_

"I expect you all to find new members."

Matsumoto slouched lower in her seat, checking the clock hanging from the east wall. The meeting wasn't even twenty minutes in, and they were already being handed an assignment?

"It'll be easiest if you direct your efforts to your own squad," Nanao continued, passing the papers out one by one. "When you find a willing volunteer, have them sign these sheets for the roster."

The sheet had twenty individual blank spaces with general demographic questions—age, rank, sex, blah, blah, blah. Matsumoto snorted. Why the hell was _sex_ of all things on there? Unless the Association had decided to let Yumichika join after all, Matsumoto was pretty sure most applicants would be female.

"As for the squads unrepresented in the Shinigami Women's Association, I've assigned extra divisions to the best suited members," Nanao finished.

Matsumoto looked around. As far as she knew, every division of the Gotei 13 had at least one member designated in the Association. If Mayuri of all people allowed Nemu a smidge of freedom for meeting attendance, every other squad should have no problem doing the same, right?

Wrong.

Nanao pressed a finger to her glasses. "And it seems Division Three remains the only squad without representation."

This was hardly surprising. The shinigami of Division Three were so equally coldhearted differentiating between male and female was like trying to the tell the difference between Hitsugaya's and Ukitake's hair colors. The day a Squad Three female joined the Association was so utterly unbelievable recruiting them wasn't even an option until now.

"And no, ladies, Vice-Captain Kira does not count as female."

Unidentified snickers hit the ceiling.

Nanao sighed. "Matsumoto, you're assigned to Division Three."

Matsumoto groaned. She was getting _twice_ as much work as everyone else? She threw out a lazy and unmotivated response, "That's unfair—why do _I_ have to go to Division Three?"

Soi Fong snorted. "And here I thought stupid questions didn't exist."

Matsumoto ignored the captain in exchange for a more palpable response.

Instead, Nanao only shrugged. "We appreciate it, Vice-Captain Matsumoto. And seeing as our member count is half of what it used to be, I'll end the meeting here. Good luck, everyone!"

Matsumoto narrowed her eyes in Nanao's direction, singling her out as the sole reason she'd have to deal with the unmentionables of Division Three. People knew—oh, yes, they knew—something was inherently wrong with the gals of Squad Three, and then again, maybe they'd have to be if they had a captain like Gin Ichimaru. Gin's female shinigami, although looked at with fear and a bit of disgust, were also pitied to a towering degree.

"Don't look at me like that," Nanao warned, gathering her papers and bee lining for the door.

"_Why_?" Matsumoto complained, shoving the papers in Nanao's face. "The girls on that squad are evil-incarnate, Ise."

Nanao deadpanned, "You know the captain." And she sure as daylight wasn't going anywhere near Gin Ichimaru without her will filled out.

"No, I sleep with the captain, there's a difference," Matsumoto chided, and despite the sarcastic air of her reply, she wasn't necessarily avoiding the truth. She and Gin prioritized their time with enough quick breathes and closed doors that they rarely even talked anymore.

"If you can get one recruit, I'll consider that an astounding success."

Matsumoto pouted. "We don't even need any of them."

"You're making too much out of this—just think, Yachiru has to recruit _women_ from Squad _Eleven_."

…Ugh. Even on the most excruciating of days, Matsumoto knew Division Three forever beat Division Eleven, even if the girls were as cold and unappealing as a blizzard.

"Just one?"

"Yes."

As easy as it sounded, 'just one' from Division Three was like 'just twenty' from any other squad. In the sixty-two weeks the Association had existed, Gin's Squad avoided it like the plague or didn't know about it, and for most part, people believed the former.

When Matsumoto finally consented, she found herself stuck in a much detested predicament. Recruit the girls, or talk to Gin?

For all efficient purposes, she chose Gin.

* * *

* * *

Division Three wasn't particularly known for its posh design—mostly because it didn't have one. The division, though loads better than the decrepit and very destroyed Squad Eleven, was old, and you could tell. The overhangs were a dull gray, versus the sharp black they'd been fifty years ago, and the wooden decks needed a rebuffing so badly you got splinters just by _looking_ at them. The entire Gotei 13 was momentarily going through a revamp of colossal proportions, and it was clearly the Third's turn.

When Matsumoto arrived near the Division Three entrance, the sun was setting and construction was positively_everywhere_.

Ladders, saws, hammers, paint—the entire front loft bore home to so many tools she almost didn't recognize the division she was in. Decks were tapered off for repair, and rooftops were half open, with piles and piles of slates discarded in the dirt and alleyways. The division looked more a mess than she'd ever seen it.

Virtually no one was outside, but who would be in this crap? Matsumoto pulled out the sheet of paper and carefully walked around a pile of disemboweled boxes.

Gin's office sat stark against the backdrop of construction (it was the only untouched building in a mile). Voices echoed softly from the windows, evidence of Gin's company.

Matsumoto, curious, opened the door and stepped inside.

Various shinigami stood erect, arms at sides as they recited the day's results to a very sly looking Captain Ichimaru. The four seats announced their information coldly across the shafts of the room, awaiting an order, any order, from their superior.

They looked not unlike very obedient dogs.

Matsumoto smirked before raising a hand in the air. "Hey, Gin! Wanna join the Shinigami Women's Association?"

The expected reaction was a room full of craning necks and wide eyes, which it more or less was. The four seats looked utterly lost: acknowledging a Vice-Captain was one thing—ignoring their actual captain was another. Obviously, they disregarded Matsumoto in hopes of keeping Captain Ichimaru's good graces.

"Rangiku? I didn't expect ya here," Gin said, forgetting his subordinates with humiliating easiness.

Matsumoto waved a limp hand in his direction. "I didn't mean to interrupt," she started, and what a lie that was.

Most low ranking shinigami were either completely shocked or utterly disgusted by Matsumoto's informality with Captain Ichimaru, but Squad Three had seen her enough to know she could call Gin whatever she wanted with little consequence. It was not a good recipe for making out-of-work friends.

Gin, suddenly remembering the shinigami in front of him, gave them an uninterested glance before saying, "Yer dismissed now."

The group of subordinates left the room in such a mechanical manner—sir, bow, sir, turn, disappear—Matsumoto felt generally bad for them. Although she didn't know Gin's captaincy well, she did know _him_ with shocking accuracy. And it took only a smile to be absolutely devastating

Matsumoto watched the robots leave before turning heel, her arms crossed. "I'm surprised you're still working," she admitted, knowing the Third, and most of the Gotei, retired around six.

Gin smiled. "Construction."

"Figures. Anyway, I need a favor."

Gin looked beguilingly alert. "Mm, a favor? Ya mean ya didn't stop by ta see me?"

"Not in the way I know you're thinking," Matsumoto said, pursing her lips. "I need help getting _your_ female officers to join the Shinigami Women's Association by next week."

"I can force 'em if ya'd like."

"No, and _why _is that a reoccurring theme among captains?" Matsumoto murmured, thinking back to Soi Fong's earlier suggestion. She slouched into Gin's desk and mourned her failure. "I just need one!"

This was obviously going in the wrong direction, and as hopeful as Matsumoto was, she knew Gin wasn't helping much.

"Ya ain't even friends with the girls in my division," Gin said out of no where, which was his way of relaying he didn't want anyone on his squad joining Yachiru's club. Matsumoto couldn't blame him, either. The Association took up more time than any captain actually supported—except for Shunsui, who was a well known advocate for women's rights (while simultaneously ignoring them, something he called 'flattery'.)

Matsumoto sighed loudly. "We just need one rep from your division, and she can seriously not show up, ever, just as long as she's on the roster. Please?"

Gin slithered, "If I can't force 'em, yer on yer own."

Great.

"You're not being very helpful, Ichimaru," Matsumoto sulked, her plan nose-diving into the cruel and unforgiving floor. She pushed back from Gin's desk and stuffed the loose sheet of paper into the tie of her uniform.

"Have ya eaten dinner yet?" he asked, and for a shocking moment, it seemed rather chivalrous.

Matsumoto sent him a suspicious look. "No, and if you're giving me an invite, it's going to take more than that."

"Oh, yeah?" Gin said, standing from his desk and maneuvering around it.

"Yeah, and by that, I mean a possible recruit," Matsumoto replied, eyeing him wearily. If she needed to act like something of a tease to get a recruit, she sure as hell would do it (and it certainly didn't take a rocket scientist to diagnose the look on Gin's face).

He took her hand and brought it to his lips, his smile filled with all too many implications. "Then we'll have ta find ya one at dinner, won't we?"

Matsumoto's look was positively predatory as she pushed a strand of hair behind an ear. "If you can find me one, you'll get more than dinner, I can promise you that."

Gin grinned.

* * *

* * *

**A/N: **Where in the world is this going, you ask? What does this have to do with anything, you ask? Well, you'll just have to wait and see. Also, I'm aware more than Division Three goes unrepresented in the Shinigami Women's Association, but for the purposes of this story, I'm assuming more than the main girls are in the club.


	2. A Set Plan

**  
**

Chapter 2

A Set Plan

* * *

"So, I was just wondering if you'd like to join an _amazing_ and multi-opportunistic organization called—"

"No."

"…Do you even know what I'm talking about?"

"No."

"Well, it's called—"

"I have to go."

Matsumoto frowned as the second Division Three female she'd approached promptly went MIA. Again. Without a doubt, the girls of Squad Three were delightfully adhering to their cold stereotype (and not budging from it). In the past half hour she'd only managed a pseudo-conversation with two women officers, and they fled so fast it was not unlike a cataclysmic world ending.

Gin, however, found Matsumoto's failure extremely entertaining.

When she sat down at their dinner table again, he was laughing.

"Oh, shut up," Matsumoto mumbled, sinking her chin into an open palm. "Your squad is delirious."

"Yer goin' about it wrong," he said, smiling at her. "Ya gotta go fer the right people."

"What're you talking about? I've taken your suggestion twice and they _both_ shot me down!"

"I think Izuru's free on those Thursday evenin's."

Matsumoto rolled her eyes; poor Kira—if he knew what an easy target he was, he might never crawl out from the proverbial rock he was under half of his life.

She sighed and looked away from her dinner, scanning the area with an uncharacteristic lack of enthusiasm.

There was something not quite right about the Division Three dining commons.

It was a standard eatery, every squad was forced to accommodate one, but each differed depending on the division. The Eighth proudly encouraged a hefty use of alcohol, the Tenth had a disgustingly high obsession with eel, the Sixth had more nobility food than any other squad in a ten mile radius (Byakuya was captain, after all), and the Third, well, the Third was just sort of…there.

It wasn't special, unless you counted its unnaturally dimmed atmosphere. The cafeteria held a disproportionate amount of seriousness Matsumoto found off-putting, not with the hilarity of her captain a constant reminder of how good she had it. Division Three showcased nothing but the discomfort of a very cold, if not slightly disconcerting, lifestyle.

When she had entered the dining hall behind Gin, the whispered chatter that was apparently their idea of vivacious conversation disappeared immediately.

Matsumoto had stared in dismay—it was _dinner_, not a funeral, for crying out loud.

Gin was fun because boundaries never applied to him, Kira made for good bar hopping when he wasn't kow towing—but the rest of them: their inner equilibrium had gone off balance with the ridiculous amount of protocol implanted in their brains.

Good lord. Even Zaraki's division had fun, albeit a slightly illegal, murderous type of fun.

Wait.

Zaraki.

Matsumoto craned her neck in the opposite direction.

It was like a big, giant, energy-spurting lizard was out to get them, because in a heavy twist of eavesdropping fate, Zaraki Kenpachi appeared virtually out of no where—well, not exactly: if Zaraki was coming for you, you'd know about it. Most of Seireitei and their sisters would know about it.

The oversized tower of muscles was approximately five feet from the dining common entrance, which was obvious because of a) his unplugged suffocating energy level, and b) half the room had suddenly disappeared.

"Huh, Captain Eleven's payin' a visit…"

"Why?" Matsumoto asked, but it went unanswered, as the Eleventh Division captain was standing in front of them.

Zaraki's size just about tripled. It was one thing to stand next to Zaraki—it was quite another to sit opposite him, which added about five feet onto his body, either direction. Matsumoto's neck hoisted backwards as she stared first at a pair of hidden kneecaps before traveling a mile upward and spying his gigantic chest. He looked slightly ridiculous; the Third's dining commons were fashioned for the normal shinigami, and now Zaraki looked more like a random wall of pure manliness than an actual captain.

Without noticing, Matsumoto leaned in closer to Gin (who did notice, and smiled, smiled, smiled).

"Ichimaru," Zaraki bellowed, sending Matsumoto to her feet in a salute so fast she was surprised to see Gin still on the floor.

"Hey, what can I do fer ya?" Gin asked with remarkable informality, making his way to a stance and grinning.

Zaraki, who made no effort to acknowledge Matsumoto, announced, "Your skinless vice-captain's in the Forth for the next two days."

Matsumoto's heart all but fell out of her chest (which was saying a lot). She shot a startled look at Captain Zaraki, feeling a pang tweak through her neck as the information smacked her in the head. What had happened to Kira?

She knew as a result of Zaraki's and Gin's odd, odd relationship, they substituted squad members when officers were low; Kira took the bulk of the obligation and consequently worked in Division Eleven almost as much as Division Three. He was stressed enough working as Gin's VC—patrolling on Zaraki's Squad nearly gave him a heart attack.

"Oh, really?" Gin asked, his concern about half that of Matsumoto's. "Did somethin' happen?"

For an astounding, unbelievable moment, Zaraki hesitated. Then he started laughing (Matsumoto swore to god the walls shook) and said, "Yachiru wanted him to join some club, and he wouldn't do it, so she threw him into a building."

Oh, freaking hell. Why not just kill the poor guy?

"He said no? Izuru listens so well!" Gin complimented to no one.

"It's a head's up, Ichimaru. Yachiru's coming for you next."

"Oh, my."

Matsumoto retained the urge to roll her eyes. Yachiru apparently didn't understand Division boundaries at all, or the idea that a female club typically appealed to only females.

"Tell your vice-captain to get a backbone when he wakes up," Zaraki commanded, turning away from the pair and earthquaking out the door.

"Will do," Gin called after, smiling.

Matsumoto shared an astonished expression with Zaraki's receding back and Gin's pleased face.

"Honey, you're nuts," she told Gin, who probably agreed with her.

"It ain't my business what Izuru gets inta."

Matsumoto stared and stared some more before announcing, "I'm going home. My innate bubbly personality met a needle an hour ago."

At the most, Nanao would give her a routinized round of pissed off expressions, but not a soul could say she didn't try recruiting the Squad Three god-awfuls. You couldn't recruit what wasn't there—and the Third's female officers made sure of that. And quite possibly, Gin prohibited club-membership and simply 'forgot' to tell Matsumoto about the policy (which at this moment was probably the truth).

"Ya off?" Gin asked, following Matsumoto to the door as they proceeded through the base entrance of the dining commons.

Matsumoto rubbed her neck. "Yeah, you want to see Kira and then go drinking?"

Gin would absolutely say no, but it was worth a shot.

"I gotta better idea."

"I can bet you it isn't."

Gin grinned. "I need a vice-captain patrolin' with me n' the squad tonight. Since ya said yer free…"

Matsumoto smirked coolly. "I said I was off, not free."

"What if I said somethin' real polite like…please?"

"Gin."

"I'll buy ya sake."

"No."

"Fer a week."

"…Okay, let's go!"

* * *

**A/N: **I needed a bridge between the first chapter and the next one, and this is supposed to be it. Anyway, this is the new, much more improved chapter 2—I have a better idea, so so so sorry for the confusion. Matsumoto will still obviously be transferred, I just need to rework it.

VERY few GinRan stories characterize the friendship between Gin and Matsumoto WHILE in the Gotei 13 (mostly because there apparently isn't one), so I'm trying to change that around. I'm greatly tired of depressing GinRan fic. They're such a hilarious couple. XD

Thank you again for the comments, I really do appreciate them. : )


	3. The Night Patrol

Chapter 3

The Night Patrol

* * *

She didn't know where they were; what she did know was thirty or so men and women sure as heck weren't staring at her face.

Matsumoto cleared her throat, garnering the attention of the group of shinigami eyeing her chest without the decency of tact. The men gave her a look not unlike one gave a god; the women, however, were a different story. Unless they were into that sort of thing, most females stared at Matsumoto's assets in disbelief—it wasn't so much a 'I wish I could rock mine like that' as it was a 'how the hell do they stay in there' deal.

Gin walked up beside her, smiling. "Get yer acts together, we're departin' toward the east region where hollow activity's been increasin' over the past few days." He nodded toward his squad, twenty or so fifth and fourth seats, before looking at Matsumoto. "Those under Vice-Captain Matsumoto's order will be headin' south-east. Keep in mind the hollow count's been a high one; stay in yer squad and keep backup ready."

There was unanimous shout of allegiance from the fifty shinigami before Gin's squad disappeared in the opposite direction, heading for their destination. Gin turned to Matsumoto and said, "I'm headin' north-east about a mile from ya. If ya need backup, I ain't far."

Matsumoto smirked. "You look good giving orders."

Gin grinned widely before flash stepping from the area.

"Oh, _gag_, Matsumoto, can't you wait until you two are alone?" Yumichika said, throwing her a disgusted look.

Yumichika was most certainly there against his will, and it showed through his hardly charming attitude. As compensation for nearly killing Kira, Zaraki sent Yumichika as a substitute and aid for Gin's patrol. He was only slightly more open to the idea because Matsumoto was VCing, but he surely didn't tag along to witness a GinRan extravaganza.

Matsumoto crossed her arms. "Well, he did." She turned from the fifth seat and announced to the squad under her command, "We're moving toward the mountain territory, so I suggest traveling quickly through the eastern route just beneath it. As Captain Ichimaru reminded us, the hollow count is not one to brush off. If you can, stay in groups."

A unison of shouts echoed from the officers, and they immediately departed into the night sky.

Yumichika ran a hand through his hair. "I wasn't aware the Tenth fancied the Third, so what're you doing here? And don't try lying to me."

"It sure isn't out of the goodness of my heart," Matsumoto joked, and the two smirked at one another before leaving the area.

* * *

It wasn't that the night wasn't beautiful, because it really was. But when a person worked a ten hour shift all day only to find a night patrol at his feet, nothing was beautiful anymore. Matsumoto more or less took at least a two hour nap during work—but Yumichika didn't have such a pleasure, unless he was planning his funeral seven hundred years too early.

He was yawning, and Matsumoto wasn't far behind.

The eastern route was just beneath an impressively gigantic mountain, about two miles from the mountain path that led around it. The area was deserted, save a patch of arbitrary trees shaking from the breeze.

The central region under their assignment was a span of twenty or so spiky mountains hollows apparently found appealing. As far as Matsumoto could tell, the area was dead.

"What's up with all the tenth seats?" Yumichika asked, surprised, and Matsumoto looked ahead to the shinigami in front of her.

"Hmm? I have no idea, I'm a sub, remember?"

Admittedly, it was a little weird. Typically the lower ranks were diluted with fifth seats and above, a caution exercised by captains as an attempt to save lives and keep causality rates down. Hitsugaya did it as a safety measure when he wasn't around, and even Soi Fong exerted some sort of provision to keep her squad in shape.

"Well, it _is_ a slow night. It's been an hour, and nothing," Yumichika said, throwing his head back. "We got the boring route."

"Huh, well, if it really is slow…" Matsumoto increased her speed and sprang forward, eyeing a group of girls. Out of respect, the female officers slowed their positions and acknowledged Matsumoto as their commanding officer for the night, but that was it. Despite Matsumoto's status, they were still uncomfortably chilly around her. "Hey guys!" Matsumoto called, "so, I'm part of this organization called—"

"No, thanks," all three girls responded simultaneously without so much as a change in expression before stepping into shunpo and disappearing.

Not again!

Yumichika gave Matsumoto a smug look when she returned. "Just give it up."

"Tell that to Nanao."

"Well, if you'd let me join, maybe I could recruit more members."

Matsumoto sighed. "You know the answer to that."

Yumichika posed faux-offended. "What? I have some really good ideas!"

"Oh, yeah? Name one."

"Monthly meetings instead of weekly ones."

The Tenth VC paused slightly, nodding her head. "…Actually, that's not a bad idea…" Matsumoto mused as she thought of Yachiru's objection as far as providing a monthly calendar would go. But in the back of her mind, she could feel the area around them shifting composition, and very suddenly, it went _hot_.

Without warning, both Matsumoto and Yumichika skidded to a halt as the region exploded in a fit of screams so loud two thirds of the squad went to their knees. Matsumoto felt an uncontrollable dizziness sink into her skull as the surrounding energy level amplified to a startling degree.

"What the hell is that!" Yumichika shouted, scanning the area in a panic.

"I don't know! It must be a—"

The screaming stopped just as quickly as it had started, leaving the area quiet as death. The energy level dropped considerably, abandoning the path and returning it to its original state of total silence.

What had just happened?

"I can't believe I didn't sense that before," Matsumoto said, shaking her head in shock. As a habitual vice-captain, she collected herself hastily and shouted, "Okay, listen up! There's something around here, and it's undoubtedly hiding. I want groups of five or more scouting the premises—if you find anything with that reiatsu, call me immediately!"

As the groups formulated, Matsumoto turned and eyed the topmost region of the mountain with uncertainty.

The encompassing energy level had returned to normal, but the junction between the frontal mountain and the next was pulsating just enough to cause suspicion. Matsumoto drew her zanpakuto and leapt away from the crowd.

"Where're you going?" Yumichika called, jumping into the air after her. "You can't go after that thing alone!"

"This from a Squad Eleven officer? I think Zaraki just died."

Yumichika rolled his eyes. "Har, har, but I'm serious, Matsumoto. I couldn't even recognize that thing's energy until it hit me in the face."

The ledge of a mountain path reached Matsumoto's feet as she landed softly, sword in hand as she inspected the area. Yumichika was right, but if the hollow was as formidable as she thought it was, a vice-captain needed to cut it off first. The odd thing was, it hadn't felt like a hollow. It felt…dead.

"Where're the others?" Matsumoto asked, locking her view about fifty feet below.

Yumichika craned his neck backwards. "They're just beneath the mountain, north of us."

Matsumoto nodded. She wanted the squad far enough to avoid damage but nearby in case all hell broke loose. But if a fifth seat and vice captain couldn't take down a hollow, it wouldn't matter how many tenth seats drew their swords.

"Huh, I could've sworn I felt—"

"Holy sh—"

What looked like a log of wood but was undoubtedly a gigantic arm tore its way out of no where, ripping through a chunk of the mountain and squarely thrusting Yumichika off the cliff. Matsumoto whipped her direction to the left and up, up, up, staring directing into the ankle of an extremely large and angry hollow.

Its ivory mask hid its face, its teeth the size of a human's head, its body that of a three story building. It stood like a man and crouched like a beast, its growls equivalent of a high pitched yelp, so unsettling it made one's stomach churn.

Yet, there was something wrong with it.

But then was not the time to question a very deadly monster.

Yumichika had returned from his fall, and he and Matsumoto nodded at one another.

"Bloom, Fuji Kujaku!"

"Growl, Haineko!"

Their zanpakutos released against the startling reiatsu composition of the hollow at present, diverting the flow of energy and redirecting it to the opposite channel. They pulsed together, sizing one another up by the devastating feel of their energies, bearing down on the hollow as it bore back.

"I'll go for the back anterior!" Matsumoto called, clutching the hilt of her sword.

Yumichika nodded. "I'm going for the feet then, try and divert it to the left! Keep it from the mountain!"

It was best to go for the face when fighting a hollow, but the thing was at such a gigantic capacity going full frontal was asking for a suicide wish.

The hollow curdled a scream so bitter to the ears it was almost like a shrill sob, but the effect was worse than any tears could ever be. Each yell was like a ripple of energy kneading itself into your bone structure, into your gut, into your brain. It was like nausea, like being hit in the head with a baseball bat and staying conscious.

The constitution of her sword was now buzzing ash, anxiously awaiting an order to slice the hollow's head off. As Yumichika dived lower, Matsumoto took the opportunity to shunpo behind the hollow's skull, directing the bulk of the ash toward the neck and spine.

"Go," she whispered, and the ash struck with all the efficiency of a sword.

The hollow screamed.

Yumichika's blades sliced at the hollow's ankles, and it too, cried louder.

When it seemed the hollow had completely averted its attention to Yumichika, Matsumoto struck a final time, aiming for the skull and expecting a glorious conclusion. But imagine her surprise when _nothing happened_.

Matsumoto gasped, her eyes widening as the hollow basked in front of her, completely unharmed. "Yumichika, move!"

But the consequences of an undamaged hollow rang clear as the beast promptly dug its claws into Yumichika's side, grabbing the man and shattering his zanpakuto in one take. Without a second thought, the hollow wound up his arm and pitched Yumichika into the port side of the mountain, rendering him unconscious.

"Oh, god," Matsumoto let slip, grabbing her ear piece and the microphone attached to it. "Requesting back—"

She felt a bulky set of fingers slam into her ribcage, and by the time she opened her eyes again, the area around her was a blur of rapidly moving trees and rocks. They went stationary as she felt her body make contact with the lower half of the mountain, and everything flashed like lightning.

The hollow screamed again, sending chills across Matsumoto's bones.

By now squad members had arrived, but it did little difference. Matsumoto watched as they were easily struck down, and she finally yelled, "Get your captain!"

She was seeing colors, she was seeing blurs, and the coherency of the situation was long gone.

The hollow swiped at her again, wounding her leg as its nails ripped into her thigh, tearing the fabric and her skin like butter. The pain sizzled up her stomach and into her throat before finding its way through her brain, where white flashes of anguish penetrated her sight.

It screamed again, and the ripple effect nearly made her pass out.

The hollow was closer than before, but it had anchored itself onto the mountain's side and couldn't leave without falling. Matsumoto was far enough to gauge the distance but close enough to make a conclusive plan.

Taking a deep breath as an attempt to stop the nausea, Matsumoto channeled the ash of her sword into the face of the hollow and yelled, "Blue Fire, Crash Down!"

The repercussion was not unlike a bomb.

The ground quaked, sending tremors up through the mountain as the hollow's mask disintegrated into dust, destroying its body and literally triggering a massive explosion. At an alarming rate, the shock waves throbbed from the mountain, thrusting Matsumoto backwards and off the edge she stood on.

A rock nipped her forehead, instigating another flash of light, interrupting her vision and causing her to spiral downward.

She was awake enough to note her sword was gone, but hardly enough to find her ground.

Luckily, a pair of arms grabbed her, and when she opened her eyes again, Gin was holding her securely.

"Don't move," he said, and Matsumoto couldn't have even if she wanted to. Her injured leg wouldn't let her forget what bad shape she was in.

However, what happened next was far worse than an injured leg.

With the energy of Matsumoto's attack and the startled defense of the hollow, the mountain was convulsing rapidly, until it finally _shattered_.

It came down in a rumble of deafening noises, shooting out rock in all directions. Gin jumped upward and out of the way, but the rest of the squad was not as lucky.

Because they had taken the path beneath the mountain, thirty plus shinigami were caught in the fire, the explosion downing them in a waterfall of heavy debris. The energy from Matsumoto's spell and sword radiated throughout the explosion, intensifying the weight and augmenting the effect, making an escape nearly impossible.

When the dust settled, not a soul moved.


	4. Dropping a Mountain

Chapter 4

Dropping a Mountain

* * *

Shunsui sipped his sake jar. "So, the trial's tomorrow, eh?"

When bad things happened, Matsumoto, like the instinct of a wounded animal, returned to her original home in the Gotei—Squad Eight. A shoulder to sob on—or sake to indulge in—was never very far, considering Shunsui was about three sets of shoulders and a heart full of pacifistic love. The sake typically came afterwards.

"God, I can't believe this happened," Matsumoto droned, her sake untouched. "How did this happen?"

A strip of gauze was tied uncomfortably around her head, covering the wound she'd received from the rogue rock last night. After three hours of squad on squad rescue, Gin reintroduced Matsumoto to every shinigami's home away from home: the infirmary. Two hours of intensive recovery kido had Matsumoto's leg in good condition to walk on, but regardless, it was still covered in bandages.

"Matsumoto, I highly suspect this trial is for show only—VCs have gotten into worse trouble than this," Ukitake consoled. The Division Thirteen captain just happened to be there when a begrudged Matsumoto slammed through the doors of Shunsui's office. Luckily, his words of wisdom often came with a higher level of coherency than Shunsui's did.

Because the casualty rate of Matsumoto's blunder was so high, Yamamoto had no choice but to enforce a trial suggested by the Central 46, which was being held tomorrow afternoon. As the squad had been from Gin's division and not the Tenth, the repercussions were uncertain—either Gin would take the fall, or Matsumoto would. Both were scheduled to appear.

"I feel horrible," Matsumoto declared, crushing her fist into the table she sat at. "You don't understand, I've never seen Gin this busy before—he's had to file over thirty individual absentee reports while finding substitutes for the remainder of his patrols—this is all my fault!"

"At least no one died, Rangiku," Shunsui said purely as verbal comfort food, patting Matsumoto's back.

Matsumoto's brow crinkled. "I dropped a mountain on them!"

And what a large, slightly crooked mountain it had been.

She'd gotten into trouble before. She'd done stupid things before. Burning the Tenth's monthly bill was stupid. Arguing with Nanao was stupid. She'd go as far as to say drinking at work the day before a patrol was stupid.

But this, this was _ridiculous_.

Both Shunsui and Ukitake had gone unfathomably quiet, which bothered Matsumoto more than she wanted to admit. Either their spring of comforting anecdotes had dried up, or they were upset with her.

Fortunately, it was neither.

"Are you," Matsumoto started when she looked up, "are you_ laughing_?"

Indeed, Shunsui's shoulders were shaking lightly, his tree of an arm tucked under his hunched stomach. The more eloquent Ukitake was staring very intently at a wall, his lips zipped so tightly they were turning an even more unnaturally pale color.

Finally, Shunsui broke into a fit of uncontrollable laugher. It was no surprise Ukitake cracked next.

"How in the world is this _funny_?" Matsumoto snapped, echoing the shell of an absent Ise Nanao.

"You—hah—you dropped a _mountain_ on Ichimaru's officers," Shunsui managed to say, choking on an infinite stream of laughter.

"Captain Ichimaru's squad must be a bit slow!" Ukitake added, laying a hand on Shunsui's shoulder, insulting Gin's division as nicely as he could.

"Slow? Of course! She dropped a mountain on them!" Shunsui announced, bursting into laughter again.

The two captains had tears running down their faces. "Hah, forty years of serving under Ichimaru, and they're done in by a mountain!"

"They're probably happy about it!"

Matsumoto cracked a smile and shook her head, running a hand through her bangs. "Okay, okay, I get it. I'm overreacting." She took a depth breath, closing her eyes. Despite the bleakness of the situation, past vice captains had arguably done worse; she just had to keep reminding herself of that.

Ukitake was the first to calm down, wiping the tears from his cheeks. "We need to stop making this into a travesty, old friend," he said, trying to cork Shunsui's fit of laughter.

"Ah, you're right! I think it's time for more alcohol, wouldn't you say?" Shunsui held up his glass. "Join us, Rangiku?"

Matsumoto gave them a half smile. "I never pass up alcohol."

"Hear, hear!"

* * *

Unfortunately, Matsumoto had to, this time. She found herself less occupied by the sake in front of her and more bothered by the upcoming trial. After three cups of sake, she pushed the jar from her and silently left the two captains, her conscience taking advantage of her currently sober state.

Undoubtedly, everything had been her fault, and how frustrating lack of control could be! The situation was such a disgusting mess, splattered in all directions for the world to see. And no one could clean it up.

The sun was setting, but the summer night air was thick with heat.

She sat down in the grass and stared at nothing.

"Yer frownin', Rangiku."

Matsumoto breathed in heavily, the aftermath of yesterday's events heavy on her shoulders. She glanced up at Gin and shrugged. He could be sneaky when he wanted to, but there was no shaking Matsumoto's mindset. "I'm not frowning. I'm just not smiling. I think there's a difference, right?"

The breeze ruffled Gin's hair as he sat down next to her. "Ya okay?"

"I just passed up getting wasted."

"Ah."

It had been said a true measurement of friendship was the amount of words in it that could be expressed without talking. The silence filled barrels around them, emphasizing the guilt contorting in Matsumoto's gut and the fear of a very uncertain trial.

Finally, Matsumoto said, "I'm so sorry."

Gin smiled. "Save yer apologies fer people ya don't know."

"Gin—"

"What happened ain't yer fault," he said, and it felt _good_ hearing him say it.

Matsumoto shook her head, the truth more powerful than Gin's words. "Of course it was my fault, I'm not just some officer, I'm a vice-captain—oh, god, this is _awful_." She dropped her face into her curled up knees and sighed. "Your squad's in such bad shape…"

"It ain't like they're dead, and most of 'em weren't even seated. My squad's been in worse condition."

Matsumoto had found that odd—most of the officers she'd commanded were tenth seat or lower—but that only made it worse.

Gin propped his forearms onto his knees. "Ya know the trial's just fer show so Byakuya won't have a hernia."

Matsumoto snorted. "You're probably right." She lifted her head and smirked. "Gin, I dropped a mountain on them."

And despite the severity of the situation, they both started laughing.

* * *

Hours later, the dark deeds of a certain Division Three captain cleared themselves across the soul of Division Five.

Gin smiled widely as Aizen browsed over paperwork.

"I take it went well?" he asked, glancing up from a document.

Gin leaned into a wall. "A chunk of my squad's defunct, but I ain't complainin'."

Aizen withdrew a hand after placing several documents into his outbox. He flexed a set of fingers before starting on the second group. "Are you sure it wasn't a consequence of their own inexperience?"

"It ain't. The hollow was too far out of their reach for them to do anythin' about it." Gin paused, stretching. "Yer experiment went hay-wire real nice."

Aizen sat back in his chair, watching Gin steadily. "Glad I could help." He smiled. "And Matsumoto took the hollow out?"

"Yep. Though I gotta admit, I didn't expect the mountain to come down like that."

Gin shifted a little, which Aizen undoubtedly saw. He asked, "Do you feel bad, Gin?"

Gin smiled. "Not a bit."

Aizen laced his hands together, his elbows propped against the wooden desk. "The Central 46 will have their verdict out tomorrow. Rangiku Matsumoto will fill the vacant third seat of your division. Unquestionably, Hitsugaya will appeal."

The most frustrating thing regarding the Central 46 was the very living members controlling it. Twenty-three men and twenty-three women still held iron grips on the legal system concerning the Seireitei, and Aizen wanted nothing more than to dig their graves and throw their bodies in one by one.

For the past few years, he'd been administering a sluggish power over the group without the messiness of death, and if need be, he could easily alter pending trials and their outcomes.

"'Course he will." Gin glanced at the white ceiling, feeling relaxed. The events to come would prove…interesting; he'd be slightly disappointed if they weren't. Smirking, he averted his gaze back to Aizen and said, "I'm departin' fer now."

He moved to the entrance, reaching for the door, when Aizen said, "You're sure this is what you want?"

Gin found this tremendously amusing, and without turning back, he said, "I ain't a regretful kinda man." And he disappeared.

* * *

**A/N: **I was seriously cracking up while writing the Shunsui and Ukitake scene. I can totally imagine them splitting a gut. XD

So, more of Gin's 'plot' will be revealed later. Not that big of a deal, nor is it so much a focal point of the story.

Thanks for all your support, everyone: )

EDIT: This site is driving me NUCKING FUTS. _Why _does it keep messing with my documents and screwing up my word order? First html practically killed all my formating (has that happened to anyone else?), and now normal docs are taking a fall? DUDE, FFN get your act together, PLEASE.


	5. The Trial

Chapter 5

The Trial

* * *

Like requesting the audience of General Yamamoto wasn't bad enough, Matsumoto had the unfortunate circumstance of standing squarely between one pissed off Hitsugaya and a quiet as night Ichimaru. 

The meeting chamber where the Gotei 13 captains usually met served as the impending trial room. Bare of furniture as expected, Matsumoto, Gin, and Hitsugaya were instructed to stand in the center of the room until Yamamoto arrived.

Matsumoto was busy listening to Hitsugaya brief her on the events to come—well, watching him brief her. Sort of watching. While nodding off. With thoughts of alcohol. 

In all truth, she had basically not the foggiest notion as to _what_ Hitsugaya was talking about. Her legal terminology hit the ceiling at 'jury' and possibly the mother of all legality issues, the 'Central 46'. Outside those, she couldn't tell a subpoena from a sua sponte, and quite frankly, neither could anyone else. Her experience with trials stopped at their gossip, and beyond that, what she heard from general announcements. But to her benefit, so far the trial seemed incredibly unthreatening. It was actually showing signs of inducing boredom.

"…And that's when you'll—Matsumoto! Are you listening?" Hitsugaya snapped, grabbing his vice-captain's attention from outer space.

"I'm listening, captain." Did she actually know anyone who'd been through the ringer of a trial before?

"Yamamoto will, at most, keep this lax." 

"Uh huh." Yumichika once relayed a particularly nasty legality case involving Mayuri and his attempt to 'dissemble' Nemu, which no one could decide was sexual harassment or ownership rights. Regardless, Mayuri promised to disembowel anyone who disagreed with him.

"When he appears, you'll simply retell what happened."

"Mmm." Or the time Nanao had to serve as recorder—the trial entailed Soi Fong and a conspiracy against her Co Ops, but it was settled out of court because they wouldn't reveal any of the information without the guarantee of killing somebody.

"If you hadn't destroyed that hollow, someone might have wound up dead."

"Right." The only other trial she could remember was one Gin himself had sat in on. It detailed Zaraki, an overturned building, and fifty-two Squad Eight officers, but no one knew exactly what happened. Or most are too afraid to tell. 

"And you weren't the _captain_ in charge," Hitsugaya sneered, point blank, and stared at Gin coldly.

Gin looked over and smiled. 

Matsumoto sighed again. "I'm sorry I have to put you through this, captain."

The upset look Hitsugaya wore almost instantly changed into a significantly more sincere one. He shook his head and cast a glance to the floor. "This isn't your fault."

Even with her own captain redirecting the blame, Matsumoto couldn't take it to heart. She felt raw, nerved, and very much like someone she didn't know. Trials were a rare thing in the Seireitei; most captains typically dealt the hand of their own legality issues rather than deal with the messy Central 46, but cases like Matsumoto's couldn't be avoided.

"How's yer leg?" 

Matsumoto broke from her trance and glanced to the left. Gin smiled at her. "Huh? Oh—better." 

Without warning, he leaned in and said, "I owe ya a week's worth of sake."

Matsumoto smirked; she could recognize Gin's idea of comfort blindfolded. "Depending on how this trial goes, I'm pretty sure I'll—"

She stopped mid-sentence, feeling a thick aura of energy fill the room, highlighting the arrival of General Yamamoto. The old first captain slid the door open with a flick of his wrist, his spare hand entwined around the neck of his wooden staff. He stepped through the threshold and faced them.

Matsumoto bowed. Gin bowed. Hitsugaya bowed.

A breathless silence mirrored the anticipation and anxiety of the room before General Yamamoto spoke.

"Thank you for your attendance," he said, acknowledging the three officers standing before him. He paused for a considerable amount of time, his expression unreadable. Finally, he said with stoic eyes, "There will be no trial."

Matsumoto's heart froze.

Hitsugaya's eyes went wide.

Gin grinned.

What did that mean?_Every_ case had a trial. As if to compensate for the skipped beat, Matsumoto's heart rate accelerated to a panicked degree. _Get a grip. For once be logical, an explanation is unavoidable. Yamamoto has always been a fair man. _

But there was no fooling herself.

No trial only meant the Central 46 made a verdict based off their own opinion. Matsumoto's truth and Hitsugaya's good word meant _nothing_.

Yamamoto cleared his throat. "The Central 46 has concluded the best rationale regarding the outcome of the incident."

Matsumoto held her breath.

"Captain Ichimaru…" Yamamoto turned his focus directly onto Gin's face, "you will not be held accountable for Vice-Captain Matsumoto's actions."

Gin's expression stayed the same. He nodded and remained stationary.

Matsumoto swallowed. To some degree, Yamamoto's declaration was a load off. If Gin had been the one to take her fall, she would have undeniably felt worse. But now it left the uncertainty of her own punishment, and for the life of her, she didn't know what would happen. Without a trial, she was a sitting duck with a gun at her forehead. 

"Vice Captain Matsumoto," Yamamoto announced, greeting her with a stare, "I am pained to say the Central 46 cannot be swayed in their opinion." He paused, then said very clearly, "due to the severity of the situation, with twenty-nine tenth seats and below hospitalized, thirteen of which are in critical condition, the Central 46 has agreed on a 31 to 15 count that you be revoked of your vice-captaincy."

All the control in the world could not have stopped the shock that played, terrified, across Matsumoto's face.

_Revoked_.

_Revoked of your vice captaincy. _

"What!" Hitsugaya growled, "That's _completely_ unjustified—"

"Captain Hitsugaya, you will keep your words silent," Yamamoto commanded, forcing Hitsugaya's rage to boil internally.

Matsumoto's stomach went hollow. In all her years as an officer, she had never felt such a burning degree of shame and humiliation that the single word "revoke' made her feel now. It sunk into her bones and back like tar, dragging her down and keeping her down.

Somewhere in the back of her brain, she felt a mixture of alarm and _how dare you strip my title, old man_. She felt anger. She felt helplessness. To stand and watch without control…It evoked such utter rage. 

She bit her lip and bit it hard, closing her eyes as the pain dulled through the muscles in her neck. She would not cry. She would not cry. 

Despite the shock that groped at her senses, Matsumoto instead clenched her jaw in the painful regret that came as aftermath. She dissected her decisions, her choices as an officer—_why hadn't I thought out the consequences? _It was a stupid mistake that took payment in the form of mass injury—and all on her behalf. The outcome possibilities were never considered; she didn't measure the distance; she had screwed up. 

The officers' etiquette she was raised on forced her feelings into a jar; she collected herself and saw the world again, but the heartache still throbbed. As she stared and stared, she realized vice-captaincy detailed such a large chunk of her life, and now, what would she be? Would she be anything?

The shock of the verdict diluted into cool exhaustion; she felt worn out, dizzy.

She had been demoted, and nothing could change that. 

Yamamoto shook his head, betraying his stoic expression for a softer one. "I am sorry, Matsumoto." He returned his gaze to the center of the room and finished, "You will be placed as a third seat outside the Tenth Division"—Hitsugaya gritted his teeth—"and will serve under Captain Ichimaru's currently dismantled Third Division."

_What?_

For a brief second, Matsumoto abandoned protocol and glanced at Gin, shocked. She was being sentenced to the very squad she nearly destroyed? 

Her throat stalled; she could hardly swallow. 

Yamamoto kept talking, like words would somehow soften a shot that'd already hit its mark. The remainder of the trial was carried out in unvaried strokes as Yamamoto further explained the reasoning behind the outcome, but it was hardly needed. Matsumoto wasn't paying attention anymore. She kept her glance down-cast, her head bowed in a disgrace she could only express through the dark of her eyes and the shape of her mouth.

When the trial ended, third seat Matsumoto could not look at her captain.


	6. The Joy of Incapacity

Chapter 6

The Joy of Incapacity

* * *

"We're appealing."

The heat outside the meeting room jumped Matsumoto's senses so violently she felt like throwing up. The heavy material of her uniform clung sweaty to her back and torso, producing an uncomfortable, claustrophobic sensation. And everyone was standing _too close_. Attempting recovery, Matsumoto broke from the hovering bodies of Gin and Hitsugaya and clutched her forehead. She felt sick.

Before today, she had always felt an innate allegiance to the Central 46. They made laws, carried them out, and finalized conclusions. In a way, it was poetic, honorable, a sort of endless enigma—the 46 faces, the gods of law, were near immortal, untouchable, mythological.

Now she hoped Zaraki would slaughter them.

She knew as a child how corrupt the Soul Society justice system was, but somewhere in-between the Academy and vice-captaincy, she forgot. Decades of the Seireitei style of living could remedy even the most resentful person's feelings, rendering them ignorantly happy. It had happened to her and every other Rukongai resident turned shinigami, but now, she was being bitterly reminded of a different story.

She had been demoted and transferred to a squad she had no business being on.

The afternoon had transformed into a devastating nightmare—and _why was the heat so goddamn bad?_ Matsumoto breathed in heavily, filling her lungs with thick warmth.

"Matsumoto, you _will _get a trial," Hitsugaya said again, "We're appealing."

Matsumoto covered her eyes and forehead with an open hand. "Okay, but does it matter? If they wouldn't give me a trial before, they won't give me one now." The defeat in her voice was unmistakable, despite her efforts to sound the contrary.

Hitsugaya threw out an arm. "It does matter—you've done more good than half the vice-captains here, and I will not let this go!"

Without a goodbye, Hitsugaya disappeared to the other side of the yard. "Don't you let it go either, Vice-Captain Matsumoto." He flash stepped leftward and was gone.

The heat radiated. Matsumoto took another breath and pinched the bridge of her nose, minimizing the pain throbbing throughout her temples. An unwelcome lump had balled in her throat, generally a consequence of holding back tears. She swallowed, clicked her tongue, swallowed again, but the pain stayed.

What a mess.

What would she say to Nanao? To Kira? It sickened her to know she'd be their subordinate instead of an equal, and how would they treat her then? How was she supposed to act, and where was she meant to go? She'd been a vice-captain for so inherently long she couldn't remember a third's schedule, duties, or even accommodation measures, and when she finally did, could she accept them?

There were always sticky problems with demotion; you could lose a title, but losing the experience and power level of the title was next to impossible. Matsumoto would be a vice-captain stuck in a third seat stuck in a division she didn't belong to. The knowledge of the Tenth, and the skill of a lieutenant, could not be erased.

Two divisions comprised her life: the Eighth and the Tenth.

Adding the Third made her furious.

The Third. _Gin._

Matsumoto looked up suddenly, spying Gin a few feet from her, standing with his arms hung loose and a chin pointed upward. He glanced at her.

Sighing, she did what seemed the most comforting at the time.

She pressed her forehead into Gin's shoulder and said, "I am so _pissed_ right now."

A voice sang in the back of her head, _dejection never runs far from bitter fury, does it?_

Gin put a hand to her neck, running his fingers through her hair and cupping the back of her head. He smiled, "The old man ain't fair. He could've pulled his weight, got ya a trial and everythin'." Gin wasn't necessarily lying, although admittedly he wasn't about to help the situation, either. Yamamoto could, if the situation got messy enough, demand a trial. But the interesting thing was—he hadn't.

And Gin would use that to his benefit dearly.

"I can't believe this, I can't believe this happened," Matsumoto said, her teeth grinding, "What the hell happened?" She had gone from vice-captain to third seat in under an hour; was that a record or something?

She leaned in closer, tired, angry, and hurt.

Gin watched her, interested.

"Do appeals even work?" Matsumoto asked no one, maybe Gin, but probably no one.

Hitsugaya's appeals sure as hell wouldn't, Gin knew, which pleased and entertained him simultaneously. The kid could appeal until he finally grew an inch, and it still wouldn't do anything to set the situation in a forward motion. Matsumoto was stuck, stationary, and Hitsugaya couldn't do a thing about it.

"God dammit, I can't believe this," Matsumoto said again and again until she finally did believe it. "I feel so freaking helpless right now," she growled, curling her fists into tight wads. Matsumoto was starkly independent, and the irritating thing was, even now when she asked for help, it still wouldn't actually do anything. Fighting the outcome of a law, indirectly fighting the Central 46, was stupid, if not entirely useless.

_God_, she hoped one of the council members would have a heart attack.

_They've demoted you, what an insult…_

Gin released the back of Matsumoto's head and withdrew his hand from her hair. "C'mon," he started, "ya need yer mind ta wander a bit."

"No, I need to kill something," Matsumoto reminded him. But when Gin started walking toward another area, she trashed the necessity for violence and followed him.

* * *

With a flick of her wrist, Matsumoto had slammed the glass of sake onto the wooden table she sat at and yelled, "That asshole!"

Gin sat next to her, chin resting on a propped up arm, watching her with a small smile.

Matsumoto downed another glass. "God, I hate him! Wait, why do I hate him again? Oh, it doesn't matter!"

She was more than a little drunk, transcending the line between acceptably tipsy and totally wasted. With every glass she consumed, she found the gap between herself and Gin minimizing, and by her eighth glass, she was nearly sitting on top of him. Two large bottles of alcohol stood discarded, replaced by a generally heavier third bottle, which was being emptied quickly.

"This is all so unfair! I hate the legal system here! We don't even know what those Central 32 idiots look like!" She really did mean to say 46, but somewhere in the last hour she'd forgotten how to count.

Gin leaned in closer, "Prob'ly nothin' pretty."

Matsumoto nodded, sipping her drink. "I know! How do we even know they're _real_?" The sudden idea that the Central 46 could be one lonely fat man started Matsumoto on a possible conspiracy theory. "Maybe there's not even forty-one of them, maybe there's like, eighteen and the count was actually thirteen to five! What if Yamamoto's being tricked?"

Gin smirked. Well, Matsumoto wasn't tremendously wrong.

"Oh, _god_, what if the Central 45"—she was getting closer to the actual number of the council—"is made up of no one? Maybe Yamamoto just decides things himself! That's a total unbalance of power!"

Gin was pretty sure she meant 'abuse of power', but unbalance sounded sort of right. He had the urge to humor her and help construct the conspiracy theory as well, but he was a conspirator himself, after all, and he had to pay some respect.

Matsumoto sighed, pushing herself closer to Gin. "Do you know how much I love being called a VC?" She gulped down the remainder of the glass and reached for the bottle. "I mean, formality sucks, but just the idea of being a vice-captain, it's like a never-ending lift!"

She tried to steady the head of the bottle over the cup, but her visual field was slightly spinning. Gin reached forward and poured the glass for her, and Matsumoto looked at him like he just appeared out of nowhere.

"Thank you!" she called, the gap between them now gone as she slid into Gin's lap, wrapping her arms around his neck. "You know what pisses me off the most?"

Gin had placed his hands on her hips, steadying her. "What?"

They'd been at the bar for nearly three hours; the sun had set twenty minutes ago. Matsumoto's voice softened and she glanced sorely at the bottle of sake. She murmured, "I'm never going to catch up."

Gin tilted his head as Matsumoto relaxed herself into him. He knew what she meant—Matsumoto feared she'd never make captaincy—so for her sake, he didn't ask. Instead he pulled her face to his, about to start something, when Matsumoto rolled off of him.

"Wow, I can't remember what I was talking about," she said, grabbing the bottle of sake and standing up. "Let's go outside!"

The outside air was very much like it'd been four hours ago, but the heat had subsided enough to make a nighttime walk manageable. Before they'd even walked a hundred steps, Matsumoto had finished the remainder of the bottle and was showing signs of wobbling.

Maybe she was getting a little _too_ drunk.

She grabbed the closest limb she could find, which was Gin's arm, and smiled. "So, where're you going?"

"Ya can pick a direction."

"Okay! Thatta way!" Matsumoto flung a hand out in some arbitrary direction, which Gin grinned at, because it was a path straight to Division Three.

Matsumoto felt cheerful as she strolled along some path that slightly resembled a very blurry Squad Three junction. In fact, she couldn't remember why she was upset in the first place. Gin had treated her to a truck load of alcohol, she didn't have work tomorrow (_why was that again?_ she thought); what in the world could be wrong with the Seireitei? Everything was grand!

When they arrived at Gin's division, Matsumoto crossed her arms and nearly fell over. "Are we in Squad Eight?"

Gin looked at her oddly. How the hell could she think _his_ division looked anything remotely similar to that drunken idiot's? He corrected her, "We're in my division."

She gasped. "Did you remodel it?!"

Gin smiled and skimmed her wrist, leading her up a small set of stairs onto a deck she'd most likely never been to before. "This here's the third, fourth, and fifth livin' quarters."

If Matsumoto had been sober, she would have handcuffed herself to a pole and refused to take another step. But she was incredibly drunk and instead asked, "why do _numbers_ need to live somewhere?"

They stepped through a threshold and traveled inside, where the hallway proved to be eerily empty. Almost all his fourth and fifth officers were patrolling tonight, trying to pick up the slack of the hospitalized tenths.

Gin stopped at a door and slid it open, revealing an empty room, save some old boxes and a futon. The walls and floor were wooden, and the large window near the back looked out of place as moonlight shined through and onto the wooden planks. Gin moved into it, Matsumoto following him, and they stared at it together.

"What is this?" Matsumoto asked, not really caring, but still drunk enough to question nearly everything.

"Yer room."

Matsumoto raised an eyebrow. "What?"

"This's where yer gonna stay, it's the third seat's room."

For the life of her, Matsumoto had absolutely no idea what Gin was talking about. Actually, it seemed she had entirely forgotten Gin was her new captain and that she was due for a transfer tomorrow at ten. It seemed she'd forgotten her demotion, Hitsugaya's efforts for an appeal (right then she thought Hitsugaya was doing paper work), and the entire fiasco in general.

Instead, she laughed. "What? My room's in the Tenth! Wait, are we in the Tenth? Gin, are you drunk?"

Gin smiled. Explaining anything to her now would likely just confuse her more or piss her off a lot. She'd remember in due time, probably the next morning; she didn't have much of choice.

"Gin, you shouldn't drink so much. You're saying the weirdest things," Matsumoto announced, stepping forward and falling over.

Like an innate reaction, Gin reached out and grabbed her, trying to regain his balance and secure hers. But Matsumoto clearly had other ideas; she spun leftward and threw her arms around Gin's neck , pushing her body against his. "God, I'm glad you're here," she said out of nowhere, running her fingers up his neck and through his silver hair. "I don't know where we are, but I'm glad you're here, Ichimaru."

Gin smiled and leaned in, his breath hot against hers. "Ya stayin'?'

Matsumoto grinned and looked around. "Geez, Gin, what happened to your room? It's so bare!" And then without warning, she kissed him aggressively, pulling his mouth down to hers and igniting so much tongue she _had_ to be a little more sober than she was letting on. Gin was happy to oblige, framing Matsumoto's face with his hands and kissing her harder.

She was too drunk to remember where the futon was, and instead she let Gin lead her wherever he thought the futon might be, but they weren't making much progress either way. Matsumoto ran her hands under Gin's hakama, tracing his chest and grinning beneath every kiss. Gin, however, was having a slightly harder time, as he was ready to forget the futon and drag them both to the floor.

Eventually they found it, and together they collapsed in the form of a bunch of arms and legs, clawing at the other and tearing off any layer of clothing they could find.

Matsumoto was starting to sober up, but she was too occupied by Gin's roaming hands to even try for coherency. He just tasted so _good_, like persimmon-flavored alcohol, which was possibly an affect of Matsumoto's drunken mindset, but she couldn't tell. There was some reason why she wanted to forget this day, and if Gin distracted her, it only meant she didn't need to remember it.

She kissed Gin's mouth again, licking his lips and trailing off to his neck. Her legs tied around his waist as Gin's arms secured her upper back; he pressed her against him and muffled any noise into her hair, breathing in her scent and color with earnest.

Gin felt no regret.

Matsumoto was too drunk to feel regret.

And as he kissed her harshly again, a smile graced his lips.

* * *

**A/N: **Dude, it's Friday! Read and Review!

FFN, I hate you, stop messing with my formatting!

Comments?


	7. A Matter of Priority

Chapter 7

A Matter of Priority

* * *

The morning wasn't overcast, but it was dim enough to paint a low gray across the room. Heat hung comfortably in the air, and the window was open just enough to introduce a small breeze throughout the enclosure.

The fibers of consciousness were coming together again, and Matsumoto felt herself stirring. Was it morning? Yes. It must be morning. She made for vision but clamped her eyes shut, a sharp pain sparking through her temples. The feeling was familiar, which only meant one thing: a hangover. She rubbed her eyes and tried to dissect the amount of alcohol she could have possibly consumed without killing herself, and came to about three bottles.

The first matter of priority was to sit up, which Matsumoto was having ridiculous trouble with. Her body lurched forward in a poor attempt, and she managed to move upright without renewing the jolts of pain. The sheets—or sheet, for that matter—slipped from her chest and into her lap, and the second matter of priority surfaced.

She was naked.

Okay.

With a hand still pinching her nose, Matsumoto groped around until her hand hit something warm, a man. Okay. She now could assume the night either went in good direction, or she'd lost her clothes and needed body warmth. But who the hell was the guy?

The last matter of priority was to open her eyes again. Great. Breathing in heavily, she peeked open the left, then the right, and the pain exploded in such colors she swore to god a moral lesson against drinking popped up somewhere. Her eyes focused in on the surroundings, and her heart plummeted. This was not her room. This was not Gin's room. Which only meant she had gone home with either Hisagi, who could now say he finally scored, or a possibly bigger dilemma, some stranger.

Either way, it was easy to solve.

With a cautious but generally unworried glance, Matsumoto looked to the man sleeping next to her, and immediately shrugged in relief. Okay, it was Gin. The captain was asleep on his side, back bare to world, breathing lightly. His hair was messy, and his clothes were piled in a lump on the floor. They'd apparently gone home together, and Matsumoto assumed Gin had bought her all the alcohol.

But where were they? The room was empty and considerably more cramped than both Gin's and her rooms were; it looked like someone'd just moved out, with several boxes stored high against the ceiling, the shelves bare, the floors cleared.

Another beam of pain sunk into Matsumoto's head, and she clutched it miserably.

"Hey, wake up," she said to Gin, pushing on his shoulder. She looked around the room again, wondering if they were even in the Third Division, because they sure as sun weren't in the Tenth.

Gin didn't move, which annoyed Matsumoto incredibly.

She curled her fist and punched him harshly in the rib cage. The motive worked; Gin moaned and jumped slightly, opening his eyes.

"Ow," he mumbled, gripping his side in pain.

"Where are we?" Matsumoto asked again, the frustration from her hangover increasing with every intake of light.

Gin, rubbing his eyes, seemed to have forgotten where they were. Without a word, he sat up and pieced together coherency. Finally, he said, "Third Division...We're in the third seat's room."

The third's seat room? How'd they end up there? She knew it had something to do with last night, and if she was with Gin, it was probably okay, but the inkling feeling in the back of her mind told her it was _not_.

And then suddenly, it came to her.

This was _her_ room. She was the third.

She'd been demoted.

With a very long sigh, Matsumoto collapsed her face into a set of open hands and rubbed her eyes and nose bridge, her stomach sinking to the floor in a manner that made her feel surprisingly ill.

Gin glanced over, and without a smile, put an arm around her shoulders until she was well enough to collect herself.

Revoked. _Oh, god_. Matsumoto recovered her eyes with the palms of her hands, grinding her teeth together. She'd blown it. In one day, fifty years of hard work and _You can do this! _had crumbled down in a heap of accusations and poorly made verdicts, piling at her feet in a lump of regret. The Central 46 had ruined everything: it had stripped her bare of title and home. The force of it all was infuriating.

She breathed in and shook her head, revitalizing her tired mentality before opening her eyes. "I need to find my clothes," was all she said, tugging up the sheet to cover her chest. It had to be passed six in the morning now; the room was light enough with gray to prove the sun wasn't far behind. She needed to get home and talk to her captain as soon as possible.

"Rangiku," Gin said, reaching over and placing a smooth hand just beneath the base of her skull. He pressed inward, massaging her neck gently, his fingers running over her skin hard enough to relax Matsumoto's body completely. "Yer fine," he whispered, leaning in and kissing her mouth.

It was uncharacteristically romantic, a trait Gin kept well hidden, but Matsumoto didn't have the energy to confront him on it, and in all honesty, it was appreciated.

When Gin pulled back, he slid his hand down to the small of her back and skimmed it lightly. "Stay here fer a minute, and then ya can leave." He left the futon in one movement, collecting the pants of his uniform and tying them on, before he left the room entirely.

Matsumoto slumped into the mattress, cradling her head rather pathetically, the sordid events of yesterday a reminder of her situation.

Her pride, both a vice and a savior, had been kicked in the gut. She was very much in trouble, and against her better judgment, very bitter. Revocation was a humiliating level, forceful and unabashed. It sank in like lead and poisoned just as badly.

A few minutes later, Gin returned with a white glass in his hand. He kneeled in front of Matsumoto and handed it to her.

"What's this?" Matsumoto asked, staring into the bowels of the cup unenthusiastically.

"It's fer yer hangover. It's gonna help," Gin replied, and how he of all people knew hangover cures was beyond Matsumoto. He sat down next to her, staring at the wall before them, waiting for her to partake.

Without further questioning, Matsumoto downed it in one steady gulp.

Gin smiled. "Feel better?"

"…I'm sure it'll kick in sooner or later," she murmured, slouching further into Gin, who didn't seem to mind the invasion of space.

The room was still dim when they both hit the futon again; Matsumoto, still tired, was stuck in limbo. It was a new priority to find Hitsugaya, but she couldn't seem to get up and go see him. The disgrace of losing her title burned aggressively somewhere inside, mocking her. Despite her extreme lack of motivation, Matsumoto held a pivotally high respect for the Tenth; every officer showcased an incredible effort, and Hitsugaya was unlike any captain she'd ever met. He was, to put it simply, a powerful mix of assertion and concern for his subordinates.

In a way, Matsumoto felt she had dishonored them.

To make matters worse, now she was leaving them.

With a sigh, she turned away from Gin and chose a staring contest with a wall. For the first time she glanced at her situation in the stark, and finally she let the truth settle: "I can't believe you're my captain now," rolled from lips in a generally more derogatory fashion than she'd meant it.

It was the one thing she had tried to dance around and refuse, because in a sense, Gin was her superior now. Well, he'd always been her superior, but the simple separation of divisions made it more imaginary, almost like it didn't affect her. Just the idea of kow towing to _Captain Ichimaru_, the way Kira did, the way all of Gin's officers seemed to do, churned Matsumoto's stomach in twenty directions and down a few stairs.

Gin caught the annoyance in her voice and smiled widely. "Ain't it a shame now," he said, because he was annoyed, too.

Matsumoto flinched internally. "I didn't mean it like that." She sighed. "The verdict's been carried out, I'll accept that. But what I still don't understand is the transfer to your squad. You don't find this strange?"

Under normal, honest circumstances, Gin probably would have. If Matsumoto was ever reassigned, it'd most likely be to Shunsui's division once again, which bothered Gin a fraction. If the stupid drunkard ever doubted Matsumoto's unusual placement, he could easily buddy it up with Yamamoto to get a duplicate statement from the Central 46 and then start asking questions. Matsumoto _was_ the quintessential Division Eight officer; that alone guaranteed Shunsui's annoying determination.

But he was also a lazy pacifist, so the odds were in Gin's favor.

When Gin didn't reply, Matsumoto repositioned herself so she was staring up at him. He looked asleep, but his face was too tight, revealing he was more awake than he was letting on.

And then it came to her. One gorgeous epiphany, one bright, wonderful idea.

She asked, "Hey, you could always transfer me. You can do that, right?"

When Gin replied, "I won't," Matsumoto tensed up noticeably, and she could feel a disgusting amount of anger building in her blood.

"Why not?" she asked, spurring the question on.

"'Cause Yamamoto ain't lettin' me."

"That's only for Division Ten."

"Ya wanna go somewhere else?"

"I know Squad Eight well. You know that."

Gin hovered a moment in silence, his body as tense as Matsumoto's. Without looking at her, he murmured, "I'm not transferin' ya."

Matsumoto didn't say anything when she left him, pulling on her uniform and leaving the room in such cold steps it sent Gin a message loud and clear:

She was centuries old, and demotion had never been her color.

* * *

Hitsugaya found her standing in the threshold of her room, staring at nothing.

"I spent the night at Nanao's," Matsumoto lied, and she knew Hitsugaya would take it, whether it was true or not.

Hitsugaya shook his head, his face grave. "I sent an appeal. You will get a trial."

"I know."

They stared into the room together, quiet, cold. "Don't pack your things," he said.

"What?"

"Take only what you need. You won't be gone for long."

Matsumoto breathed in, her headache nearly gone. "Will someone take my room?"

Hitsugaya looked to the ground. "No one will."

They skipped a beat before: "Please don't assume I can't handle this, captain. This transfer doesn't intimidate me," Matsumoto declared, because it was the truth, and very little actually scared her.

"You will get a trial."

A trial. If the Central 46 had opted for their own opinion, what would a trial do? She didn't know, but said anyway, "I believe you."

They stood together some more, because they could do nothing else.

"Hey, captain?"

"What?"

"Wanna go drinking?"

"Matsumoto."

"Aw, even with me leaving?"

Hitsugaya frowned like the old man he probably was. "That won't work."

Matsumoto smiled. "I guess not."

The sun had laid itself across nearly all of Matsumoto's room. It was hard to depart from. Finally, she asked, "What will you do?"

"…The third will act in your position until you return."

Matsumoto accepted this in a generally easy manner. She said, "Maybe work'll get done now. What _will_ you do with all that free time?"

"Matsumoto, work got done before, and you should know time is hardly free."

"Oh, of course."

Pause.

"Hey, captain?"

"Hmm?"

"…Thanks."

* * *

**A/N: **So I seriously wrote this two weeks ago and totally forgot to post it before I left for vacation. So, so sorry! You'll have to excuse the errors—I changed a lot at the last minute, and I'm not feeling well. I'll fix them later!

Thanks for everyone's support!


	8. The Transfer's Temperature

* * *

When Aizen first met Gin, he knew Matsumoto would come along too, as an asset or as a problem.

Nowadays, she seemed more a problem _with _assets (large, provocative assets) than an asset herself.

Three months ago, Gin and a mess of _I ain't leavin' without her_ surfaced, and along with it traveled an irritated Aizen and a lot of complicated planning neither man was sure would actually work out. What they did understand was the crucial necessity to remove Matsumoto from Hitsugaya and the Tenth, physically first, mentally second. However, Hitsugaya's relationship, unfortunately, was more of a lasting influence than the symbiont it should've been.

When destroying a world and ruling another was hardly a friendly job, Aizen knew keeping Gin close was as pivotal as getting the King's Key.

Thus, Aizen went along because, quite frankly, he knew it wouldn't work.

Gin went along because he needed to try.

And hence, justification for a transfer was born. Sort of.

Though, needless to say, Matsumoto found it the most _unjustified_ 'justification' she'd ever heard of.

At nine that morning, Matsumoto stood begrudgingly in the doorway entrance of her new bedroom and wondered how the hell she had ever lived as a third seat before. The room was large enough for a futon and a small desk, a window, and a closet—it screamed military, minimalist, _small_. She frowned. _God, it's like a closet_! Vice-captaincy was no paid cruise, but at least the rooms were bigger.

The single box at her hip shifted awkwardly as she stepped over the threshold and sighed. Hitsugaya's advice was solid, sensible, but infinitely boring—Matsumoto had listened, brought a box of the most mundane necessities she had in the form of spare uniforms, money, and toiletries, leaving the rest of her possessions at the Tenth. Unfortunately, it made moving about as exciting as babysitting Yachiru or plucking out your eyebrows.

When kids were poor, they made up for material possessions through daydreams. As a kid, Matsumoto ate, breathed, and bathed in poverty, like the possibility of climbing the economic ladder was a fairytale. With no school, Gin gone, and boredom fast ensuing, there wasn't much left to do but, well, dream. She thought of food more than toys, but when she saw something pretty, she couldn't forget it. Consequently, when she first got a paycheck, frugality was hardly the first thing she endorsed.

The result was pure clutter; her room was virtually lost in a pile of frills, scarves, jewelry, cosmetics, dresses, sashes—it had potential for embarrassment, if Matsumoto embarrassed easily, which she didn't. She claimed years of deprivation prompted her girlishness, but tell _that_ to whoever housed her.

"I sure hope you're right, captain," Matsumoto murmured, setting her box to the ground and opening a large drawer from the closet. She set a few things inside before prowling the box for a uniform, when she felt a potent wave of energy slink throughout the hallway just outside.

"I know ya got more stuff than that."

Matsumoto paused, her hands framing the outline of the spare uniform like she wasn't sure what to do with it. She tilted her head back and stared at Gin with amused eyes. "Well, I'm trying to cut back," she said, not as an attempt to lie, but just to say something.

Gin was leaning into the threshold, arms crossed, smiling. He grinned wider and replied, "Yer lyin'." He paused. "That kid told ya ta keep yer stuff at the Tenth."

Matsumoto pursed her lips. "Captain, why would you think something like that?"

The formality did not so much entertain Gin as it did annoy him. "I don't know what yer expectin'," he said, even though reading an ambitious Matsumoto took all of two seconds.

What did she expect? Matsumoto's fingertips traced the black of the hakama, clean and unused and ready for the wear and tear of a military dog. She supposed she expected a trial, but then again, trials were a rare scenario—so, instead, she knew she expected some sort of change. But either way, a change was already happening.

* * *

The only reason Matsumoto sat comfortably on the couch of Division Eight was because of limbo. Well, as limbo'd as an officer could get; she had been discharged from the Tenth at nine that morning and reassigned to the Third at ten, so the hour between meant she belonged to no one, therefore hovering wherever the heck she wanted to.

Nanao was eating breakfast. Shunsui was eating breakfast (or drinking breakfast; there sure as heck wasn't food in that sake bottle). The station was relatively hushed, a handful of shinigami returning from night patrol, the others on the outside premises.

Matsumoto watched the only clock in the room, a bright red one, and waited for ten to come. It was all she could really do.

She mumbled unenthusiastically, "My arm feels empty without my VC badge."

Nanao glanced over. "You never wore it on your arm."

"Fine, I miss it around my waist."

It wasn't a lie—dangling her badge was like wearing jewelry to her.

"I'm free if you want to stop by the Peach tonight," Nanao announced, citing Matsumoto's favorite bar with as much tact as she could render before noon.

The clock read fifteen 'til when Matsumoto stole a glance in Nanao's direction, her eyebrows raised. "You _must_ feel sorry for me if you've just volunteered yourself for bar hopping," she said with a lighter air than she was actually feeling. She loved Nanao, but the Eighth Squad VC was only a good drinking buddy if one enjoyed knocking off a few with their personified conscience nagging them the entire time. Decades of Shunsui-enticed disasters had limited Nanao's drinking intake by a half, which Matsumoto could respect one way or another.

Nanao moved a bowl of food to the side. "On a brighter note, you've now successfully recruited a member of Squad Three for the Association," she noted, and her sincerity was gratefully accepted.

"Huh. That's actually true," Matsumoto replied, drumming her fingers into the wooden grain of the desk port of the couch. Although, if she knew finding a member of Division Three meant _becoming_ one herself, she'd of never done it, obviously.

"Maybe you can liven that squad up a bit, Rangiku," Shunsui said from the back of the office, amazingly un-drunk.

Right, as far Matsumoto knew, Squad Three was about as vivacious as a dead body was. Lightening the division with notoriety for concrete obedience was like banning alcohol from the Eighth. It just _wasn't_ going to happen.

"The general splendor of Division Three _is_ incredibly lacking," Nanao murmured, agreeing with her captain. "Perhaps you're better for such a squad than you might think, Matsumoto."

The general splendor of Squad Three started and stopped with Gin's smiles, and no one really considered that delightful at all.

"I'll try. I _suppose_ it's not all bad, then. Besides, the Third's in close contact with the Eleventh, so I'll see Yumichika all the time." Not to mention, the chronological placement of Squad Eleven meant she could visit Squad Ten on lax days.

"Good, good," Shunsui said, leaning forward from his desk. "I'll send my Nanao-chan over whenever we have business with the Third!"

Nanao threw him an unappreciative glare, which Shunsui quickly remedied by saying, "I may even stop by!"

"Well, won't we be havin' such a party then?"

At once, Matsumoto, Shunsui, and Nanao shot varied glances to the entrance, finding a smiling Gin standing in the doorway. His captains' robe followed his footsteps as he walked through the threshold, watching Shunsui like a wolf did a dog. They were of the same rank, the same group, and yet trust was as thin as suspicion was thick.

Gin continued, "I've come ta collect," and his meaning could not be overlooked. He smiled at Matsumoto but his eyes never left Shunsui's.

Shunsui smiled back and feigned ignorance like it was an art form. "Of course you have!" He held up his sake cup. "Rangiku, don't you still have a while, though?"

Matsumoto caught Shunsui's security faster than Gin did, and for the sake of the future, said, "It's almost ten. I appreciate the company, captain, vice-captain," she said, bowing lightly in regards to the two superiors in front of her.

Generally Shunsui could see a cop out and would usually take it, but even he was having a hard time buying Matsumoto's transfer story.

Finally, Gin's stare left Shunsui's and rested on Nanao's, and recognition flashed through his face. He smiled and said, "Why, if it ain't Nanao? Busy doin' all yer division's work, are ya?"

Matsumoto internally groaned, stuck in-between a fiery want to slap Gin's face while showing respect to her new squad. Like he could talk; he had an unusual leeway with his own division's work, forcing Kira to finish most, if not all, of it.

The Eighth's captain maneuvered around his desk, the pink hatori trailing behind him in a gorgeously artistic fashion. Shunsui leaned into the wood's edge, his palms resting gently on the surface, and for a suffocating moment Matsumoto thought he just might say _Use my Nanao-chan's proper title!_, but instead he relayed, "Won't you stop bothering my officer?"

Gin smiled back. "As soon as ya stop botherin' mine."

If was clear as day Gin was translating Matsumoto's new position as a slap in the face to the Eighth, and he was quite successful at making sure Shunsui knew who Matsumoto's captain was now.

Shunsui took Gin's response with a grain of salt and replied, "You know, Ichimaru, I find it odd the Central 46 reassigned Rangiku to your squad." He paused, reaching outward slowly for a cup of sake, before taking it in his hand and bringing it to his mouth. He sipped the liquid and then said, "Usually officers're relocated to their earlier divisions when demoted."

Gin looked unshaken. His smile grew wider. "Inad'quate squads don't _usually_ get their officers back, ain't that right?"

Shunsui laughed, but both Matsumoto's and Nanao's expressions betrayed their thoughts. With a quick bow, arms stuck to her sides like glue, Matsumoto said, "Captain Ichimaru, we should be leaving soon, sir." The formality didn't taste particularly unfamiliar, but the fact that this was her position for the next two years didn't make it very appealing.

The interruption worked. Gin glanced down at her. "S'pose yer right," he said, shooting a stare back at Shunsui. "Didn't mean ya any disrespect, Captain Eight. Just playin'."

Matsumoto threw a look back at Nanao, who nodded in her direction.

The fight was neutralized for the time being.

When they finally left the Eighth Division, Matsumoto wasn't sure what to say. It wasn't the first time Gin had insulted another captain—Byakuya was his usual practice target, and he was very, very successful—but the contempt Gin could rely in a matter of seconds was startling.

They weren't kids anymore, and as badly as she wanted to remind him of that, she couldn't condemn his actions. He was a _captain_.

"He wasn't wrong," Matsumoto said instead, watching the buildings blur by as she and Gin stepped across several rooftops. "It is usual for transfers to relocate to their earlier division."

For a minute, Gin said nothing. Then, without averting his attention, he said, "I'm real happy yer on my division. I want ya here, Rangiku."

Matsumoto's lips twitched, and she surprised herself by feeling flattered. Rare, but a possibility. Gin could throw an insult like a baseball, and compliments, although uncommon, were not foreign to him either. His dexterity, a blessing to some and an annoyance to most, was impressive.

But Gin's rotten side was a potent one. Dealing with it took gall Matsumoto didn't have the time or energy for anymore.

* * *

There was a general air of disagreement when Matsumoto made a less than spectacular entrance into the central office of Division Three. The integral hierarchy of the Gotei 13 dissolved as seated officers struggled with Matsumoto's new address, because quite frankly, she still held the air of a vice-captain. Demotions of such a caliber took time for adjustment.

So, this was it. This was her predicament for the next two years. With little sincerity, General Yamamoto had explained the binding contract of Matsumoto's situation—she would not be eligible for vice-captaincy for two years unless Yamamoto himself and six other captains agreed her ability and behavior far exceeded the demotion assigned, but it had never happened before, and Matsumoto wasn't counting on a miracle. She'd succumbed to her situation with as much pride as she could muster.

Gin was watching Matsumoto from his desk with a smile, which she took note of more quickly than not. She glanced from the documents finalizing her transfer and said, "What?" before adding, with an annoyed glance at the ceiling, "Captain?"

Gin leaned in. "Ya don't gotta call me that."

Right. Like that would be wholly appreciated by every Third Division subordinate with a brain. Matsumoto scribbled a signature across the base of the final document and handed it to Gin. "I've called you captain before," she reminded, because it was true. Publicly, at least.

"Ya weren't on my division then," he countered, taking the form without much interest. He tossed it aside and stood from his seat, edging around the desk until he was in front of his new underling. "Time ta show ya around."

Outside of Gin's office and a few training grounds, the bulk of Division Three was unknown to Matsumoto and most of the Gotei 13. When she had transferred from Division Eight to Division Ten, Matsumoto was shocked at the variation each squad's structure actually had—no two divisions were even remotely similar. Each had a separate distinction that took a good few months to memorize.

As they made for the door, Kira appeared virtually out of know where.

Matsumoto waved. "I guess we're teammates now, Kira."

Kira looked ambivalent, caught in-between sympathy for Matsumoto's demotion and enthusiasm for their new comradery; he ended up bowing instead of saying anything at all.

"Don't be so stiff, Kira, we'll have fun," Matsumoto replied to her friend's silence before following Gin out the door. What a batch of positivity she was trying to a cook up!

Kira sighed as he watched them leave, still confused and slightly apprehensive of the entire situation. Fun typically included alcohol and hangovers—he'd be lucky if he even got to work sober from now on. Great. He sighed again and sat at his desk.

The halls of Division Three were dimmed with a low light caught from an overhung window as Matsumoto trailed Gin's form with a more casual air than either meant to have.

She followed him into a stairwell, where they descended downwards into a proverbial hell—dark, suffocating, and eerie.

"What is this?" Matsumoto asked as she stared at the grimy walls around them.

"Trench 20," Gin said like it was common knowledge.

As they reached the bottom of the stairwell, Matsumoto felt an intense flare of power shoot through her spine, and a series of barking noises could be heard dully through a wall to their right.

When Gin opened the door, Matsumoto remembered why she wasn't fond of Division Three, and it wasn't just the shitty officers.

A span of twenty individual stalls stood tall in the tail of the room, thick black planks of wood protruding from the dirt ground parallel to the others. The floor of the stalls was uneven, descending downward into a dark backing of shadows. A pair of red dots dwelled within the mass of black in each individual chamber, and when Matsumoto and Gin moved closer, she realized they were _eyes_.

Creatures lurked inside, blinking their red orbs like flashing lights, their backs hunched over yet somehow slim, four legs shooting from the core of the body. Their necks, strong and thick, gave home to a wild mouth, crowned with razor sharp teeth and a well defined jaw. Curls of black mist rolled off their bodies like fire's smoke, disappearing into the dark of the cage. Their growls mirrored jagged snarls.

Division Three, the K-9 squad.

Matsumoto stared at the dogs in front of her, watching as they bit into the gates that stopped them from leaving the stalls.

The dogs were normally used as a substitute for officers when squads were growing thin, and they were _only_ used for night patrol. Matsumoto had seen them two or three times, though neither Squad Eight nor Squad Ten utilized them out of Hitsugaya's disdain for Division Three and Shunsui's pacifistic nature. The demonic dogs were, as expected, used nightly by Squad Eleven and weekly by squads Twelve, Two, and One.

"Hiya, puppies," Gin greeted, and the irony of the statement was not overlooked.

There were various officers running around, checking the cages and monitoring energy levels. They stopped and acknowledged their captain before continuing their work.

"I didn't know there were so many of them," Matsumoto commented, noting nearly fifteen stalls. She didn't like the dogs—no one really did; they were a mess of roars and vicious tendencies, animalistic evil in a literal form. Shunsui hated them; apparently so did Division Nine's captain.

Shunsui always said he'd rather be killed by a sword than fangs around his throat.

Gin glanced at her. "They're called the Kage; they sleep durin' the day, so they must've just got back from patrolin' all night."

Indeed, a majority of the dogs were winding down into piles of sleeping black blobs.

"The Kage are the VC's an' the third's jur'sdiction. Ya keep track of their energy levels at least twice a week, makin' sure none of them are too low, too high, ya know, mod'rate."

Pushing all positivity aside, the prospect of caring for animals more vicious than Zaraki on a bad day wasn't enticing at all. She was a cat by nature; whether it was natural or stereotypical that dogs bothered her didn't matter when it came to her dislike of particularly unfriendly _puppies_.

Gin moved to the front of a cage and stared into the pit of the stall. "They don't eat, don't drink—they feed off sleepin' and restin'." He turned to Matsumoto and smiled. "Izuru will help ya out if ya need it, too."

Kira caring for dogs seemed strangely appropriate.

"I'll show ya where yer office'll be fer now," Gin said, forgetting the dogs and moving back toward the stairwell.

Matsumoto nodded, but the fact that 'Gin's dogs' had never referred to the actual K-9s but to his squad officers was enough to summarize the possible outcome of the next two years. She hoped she was wrong.

* * *

**A/n: **I know there are errors, I'll fix them soon. I don't know what Division Three's specialty is, but I like the idea of them being the K-9 squad. I don't like throwing random Japanese terms in my stories, but "the Kage" is "The Shadow", because the dogs are virtually shadow-like. Anyway, "the Shadow" sounded stupid, hence the translation.

I am SO sorry this took so long to update. I have been so sick lately, and I finally just got healthy again, so hopefully updates will be a bit more frequent.

Want a preview for the upcoming _chapters_? Three words: Byakuya. Dinner. Party. It's going to rock.


	9. The First Week

The Third was possibly the only squad that considered the occasional chat absolutely detrimental to their lives. The Third was _definitely_ the only squad that wore death like a fashionable overcoat. Not without saying, the Third's idea of obedience was something not unlike the Mayuri-Nemu dynamic, and if that was the case, there was a problem.

Squad Three liked early mornings. Rangiku Matsumoto did not like waking the sun up before it woke _her_ up (she did not like early mornings). Squad Three liked dogs. Matsumoto did not like animals with sadist natures—or dogs. Squad Three liked Captain Ichimaru, which was a stretch either way, because no one liked anyone on that squad. Matsumoto liked Gin; Captain Ichimaru was a different story.

Izuru Kira was a poor, poor boy, because he didn't so much look the part of a man anymore. He stunk of worry, uncertainty, fear; Matsumoto never noticed the intensity of Kira's mindset simply because it was out of context when she paid attention. The man could command underlings with an iron fist, if only the underlings feared him as much as he feared his captain. In any sector, subordination both tuned the piano and broke it.

In the Third, you said hello to no one, which was, in a sense, saying hello in Third Division slang; you cracked your neck and knuckles and back and expected people to look; you did not smile. Gin smiled. You wore indifference with as much pride as an unresponsive expression could translate. You kept to yourself, because God forbid someone kept to you next.

Matsumoto was more miserable than she could have imagined, but that was before she found out alcohol was frowned upon heavily.

It wasn't that effort was sparse, because it wasn't. Matsumoto did her work and did it well, but work couldn't substitute company, and loneliness, as pathetic as it sounded, couldn't withstand two years of demotion. It seemed she'd contracted a disease—called socializing—that Division Three warded off and silently banned, and for the first time, Matsumoto was having communication problems.

The female officers were one thing—Matsumoto was _quite_ aware of their communication barriers—but what surprised her the most was the complete brush off she received from almost every male shinigami of Squad Three. It was appalling and generally _unprecedented_ for a man to ignore a literal goddess like herself! They listened to her only for orders and disregarded her for anything else, until they had Matsumoto scratching her head in disbelief.

It wasn't until dinner that Matsumoto even found out why.

"They know you're with the captain," Kira explained, drawing a finger over the edge of the wooden table. "They're scared."

Matsumoto had suspected this but countered readily, "Most officers know that."

Kira gave her a doubtful glance. "Most officers aren't Squad Three. If anyone's caught fraternizing with you, the captain will have his neck."

"_Fraternizing_? Geezus, Kira, I wasn't aware conversation needed a mandate," Matsumoto spat, displeased with Kira's word choice and explanation.

The Third's creepy solidarity was infuriating, mostly because the Eighth's and Tenth's had been so greatly different. The Eighth was like hugging a huge de-clawed drunken bear that slept a lot. The Tenth was like wearing a badge of pride even on the most mundane jobs (like cleaning Yamamoto's bathroom. Don't ask—you _don't_ want to know.) But the Third assembled out of fear, and from that fear, submission, until all that was left was a very scared looking human being. And that was something Matsumoto could not respect.

But the most maddening thing of all was the absence of a very controlling captain.

Gin was just…not there. It didn't surprise the Third's officers, and it shouldn't have surprised Matsumoto either, but good lord, he was a _captain_. For crying out loud, Matsumoto wasn't new to Gin's disappearing act, but just the mere truth that "Captain Ichimaru" ditched his officers just as much as he ditched her was startling. The obligation of a captain weighed no more to him than the obligation of a school boy playing hookie.

Everything was sort of unbelievable.

When Gin finally did come around, it was near the end of week one, and most of Division Three was getting ready to call it a night.

"So, where've you been, Captain Three?" Matsumoto asked in Gin's terminology, leaning into the threshold of his office with more of a seductive stare than she meant to have.

Gin smiled at the nickname and beckoned her closer. "Been out n' about, bein' a good captain ta my favorite squad," he replied, sitting back into his chair as Matsumoto approached him.

Continuing the unusually playful theme, Matsumoto said, "Oh, you poor thing. You must be _exhausted_."

Gin watched her round the desk with a freshened grin. "Ya know me so well. Read me just like a novel."

More than a novel, Matsumoto wanted to say as she slid her hands across Gin's shoulders, the fabric bunching gently beneath her fingers. Gin's hands found a spot on her hips, and he smiled up at her.

Maybe it was the lasting unfriendliness of the week or the new atmosphere, but for some reason, a feeling of relief dulled into Matsumoto's back as Gin looked at her. The frustration of the Squad Three officers made her working days feel a little too long and a little too unfortunate, but Gin seemed to truly want her there. It was a start.

"Captain?"

Matsumoto tensed and pulled her body from Gin's with difficulty, because where Matsumoto's propriety began, Gin's ended. He kept his hands placed at her hips and directed a glance to the entrance of his office, spying a flustered Kira and two fourth-seats. All three were staring intensely into the floor like statues.

Gin smiled; he was annoyed. "_What_?"

Kira bowed, like illustrated subordination would somehow justify his interruption. With a clear cut voice, he said, "Captain Hitsugaya is here to see you."

The tension that Gin had eased swelled up into a sore ache and a rapid heartbeat almost immediately; the relief Hitsugaya carried through his presence transformed into a plethora of anxiety churning uncomfortably in the pit of Matsumoto's stomach, because the Tenth captain either had good news or not.

Gin's smile expanded into a juicy grin, ripe for the squeezing. He tightened his hold on Matsumoto and said, "I better be seein' him, then."

"Gin—" Matsumoto started, prying Gin's hands from her like a crow bar did a metal box.

When Hitsugaya entered the room, a quick silence hushed all occupants until Gin stood from his desk and said, "Ya vistin' my division ain't a fact of norm'lcy, Hitsugaya."

Hitsugaya looked horrible. Like he'd lost a battle. The bitter form that defeat took played jagged across his face, seeping under his eyes in black crescents. Sleep had been his enemy, Matsumoto knew, and her heart felt pain for him again and again.

"I'd like to speak with Matsumoto alone," Hitsugaya announced, redirecting his tired stare to her.

Matsumoto almost wished she wasn't there. The large possibility of bad news manifested itself through Hitsugaya's grave expression, and Matsumoto wasn't in the mood for a continued bad week.

"I ain't gotta leash on her," Gin said, waving his hand.

Hitsugaya glowered as best as a worn face could. "Sure you don't."

Matsumoto left the office with heavy footsteps and was surprised when Hitsugaya said, "You looked like his right hand."

Right hand? Matsumoto stopped and stared down, down, down. "What?"

Hitsugaya shook his head. "Nothing. Nevermind. I have some news."

"Captain, please tell me that neutral sentence has a _good_ bias," Matsumoto complained, crossing her arms, barricading herself from the oncoming avalanche of news Hitsugaya was about to relay.

Hitsugaya glanced to the ground, which only meant they were all screwed.

"My appeal was rejected," he said.

There it was. The bad news.

Matsumoto shook her head. "That was too fast—They couldn't just reject you in a week, it's not justified, it's—" She stopped in mid-sentence, her stomach flipping and her heart dropping, because she knew whatever she said would only make her mouth dry.

What was going on? Hitsugaya was an enormously respected captain—rejecting his appeal took at least a sliver of an explanation, but from what her captain had gone through, it looked as if justification wasn't the same necessity that total uncertainty was.

The Central 46 was playing a very interesting game.

"It's defective—it didn't go through." Hitsugaya's frown deepened. "I'm going directly to Yamamoto. This is getting ridiculous."

Ridiculous was the understatement of the century.

"Isn't there a way you can get in contact with the Central 46?" Matsumoto asked, because she really didn't know. No one did.

"No. Captaincy doesn't retain that right; General Yamamoto's entitlements exceed mine, and I think it's best if I go to him first." He interrupted his train of articulation by placing his hand beneath his jaw. "Are you okay here?"

Matsumoto shrugged, thinking something along the lines of _I'm not five,_ but instead said, "Outside the chilly welcome, I'm fine."

"We're happy ta have such a gem," Gin cut in, stepping outside his office with a grin taking up his face. "Yer worryin' a lot more than a kid should, captain." Hitsugaya narrowed his eyes as Gin finished, "Good luck appealin' and ev'rythin'. Not sure it's gonna do a lot, but good luck."

Hitsugaya uncrossed his arms. "Ichimaru, you already have Captain Kyoraku's suspicion. You'll do well not to receive mine." And with that final statement, he vanished from the area.

Matsumoto sighed and looked at Gin. "You're very good at interrupting things."

Gin moved closer. "If I recall, he was the one interruptin' _us_," he whispered into her ear, sending chills up her spine with every hushed word.

"No, I'm pretty sure _you_ interrupted us—" Matsumoto replied with a light air, but Gin cut her off as he pulled her back into his office and shut the door behind them. There wasn't much anyone could say after that.

* * *

**A/n: **Stupid, generally OOC ending, but if you call me on it, I will throw my mug of water at you and not miss.

For the time I took to write this, it certainly wasn't long enough or progressive at all, but I thought it was necessary to relay Matsumoto's feelings without making a big deal out of it. The plot of this story has taken a very big twist, so it's not so much Matsumoto surviving Squad Three as it is Gin's influence on Matsumoto.

You'll have to see!

Also, the newest manga chapter of Bleach may totally screw up all the content of _this_ story and make it completely obsolete and pointless. I mean, we finally get to learn about Gin's past (YES!), but it might totally ruin everything we GinRan fans have materialized over the past few years. : ( You'll have to bear with my discrepancies.

And I can't believe I posted this before noon on a Saturday.


	10. The Wasted Vice

Matsumoto drew a finger across the mouth of a sake bottle and said, "this one, too."

A month into the routine of Squad Three had sobered up Matsumoto like a lake gone dry, and it was time to fill it up again. She stood a foot from a vendor on the streets just outside the Seireitei, shopping for—what else—alcohol.

The shop was nearly closed; it was six on a Thursday night, and business was slow. The seller took the form of a perverted middle-aged man with a penchant for all things women and sake; he was like an uglier, less flattering version of Shunsui, without the respect, admiration, or pink hatori iconic of the Eighth Division captain. But he was convenient and entertaining—plus, he thought she was beautiful, which always brought the consequence of cheaper sake.

"That one too, eh? That's a lot of alcohol for such a gorgeous damsel," the seller tried to charm.

Matsumoto glanced over her purchases—five bottles of assorted liquors—and frowned. "What? Are you serious?" She grabbed a sake container by the neck and weighed it. "This is nothing!"

She was from the Eighth—holding your sake was its equivalent rite of passage!

The seller grinned. "Hah, very well, my doll. Still got that man of yours, or can I treat ya to a nice dinner tonight? I'll even throw in some free wine!"

Prostituting her love was the wrong direction to take, as Matsumoto handed a bill over the counter and smiled, "Try again next year."

The seller sulked, "Such a prize, such a prize!" before finalizing the exchange and bidding her farewell.

As Matsumoto turned away, he eyed her chest, got the view he wanted, and happily asked her to return as soon as possible—he was having another sale on Saturday.

As she walked home that night, Matsumoto's feet ached from a long day of patrol and an even longer set of extra orders a third seat was committed to. Her days of vice-captaincy served as a reminder of harder times, but the work of a second-in-command was fading into the less spectacular third seat lifestyle. Her cramped room wasn't as claustrophobic as day one; the new lack of responsibility was appreciated; and the atmosphere of Division Three was turning familiar as opposed to the diffidence she felt earlier. Her alienation from the Third's officers, if anything, provoked her to spend less time with Division Ten and more time trying to find a friend in her new squad.

When she returned to the borders of Gin's division, there was a silence of wind and leaves, but outside that, noise had died like it'd been guillotined.

In a messed up sort of fashion, Matsumoto had a plan; it'd work, because it had worked before. It all depended on _who could hold their liquor_.

It just so happened Kira was the first victim—his degree of power, prestige and respect made him the most obvious target, because where Kira went, followers would most likely go. The VC was locking up the door to an office, his back hunched, his eyes cast low. Matsumoto maneuvered near by and tactlessly tossed an arm around his shoulders.

"So. What do you say we start a revolution?"

Kira's brow crunched downward miserably. He sighed.

* * *

Fifteen minutes later, a revolution wasn't exactly unfolding.

Kira's room, now a sort of unofficial bar, homed a variety of Matsumoto's finest alcoholic stash—imported luxuries only the savviest could even remotely locate. His door was cast open like an invitation.

"Calm down, Kira," Matsumoto said, hitting him in the shoulder.

"This is _not_ allowed, Matsumoto," Kira warned, glancing at the alcohol and pouting again.

"It's not allowed anywhere, and _I've _never gotten in trouble," Matsumoto reminded. She moved to the threshold of the door and smiled. "Now, you're sure these are the people?"

Kira shrugged. "Yes. They all have tomorrow off."

"_Perfect_."

"You sound like you're going to eat them!"

Matsumoto ignored him and stuck her head outside. "Oh, good! Someone's coming!"

Victim Number Two took the form of a fifth seat male, just as taciturn and grave as the next Third officer. His height provoked an even more terrifying feel, but Matsumoto had been around tall men enough to know they drank faster, harder, and _abundantly_. The fifth seat, dark haired and tan skinned, stopped two feet near Kira's room and nodded in Matsumoto's direction.

Fantastic. Men were unbelievably easy.

"Off from work?" Matsumoto asked, her arms crossed loosely over her chest.

The fifth seat nodded.

"Nice. What're you gonna do now?"

"…Laundry."

What a total load of bull. Matsumoto smiled, slipped an arm around the fifth seat's left, and pulled him forward. "What? Laundry! Right before your day off? Okay, okay, I understand the priority, but I just need your opinion _real_ fast."

It was like the ultimate trap of alcohol, locked doors, and self-efficacy, because the moment the fifth seat was in the room, Matsumoto had shoved two assorted cups of wine into each of the tall man's hands.

"I need to know which one's better—just a quick sip, hmm?"

"Uh…We're really not supposed to—"

"Nonsense! You're off from work, you're a man, you're aggressive, and you need liquor to sustain your masculinity!" Matsumoto declared, filling up each glass to an excessive point. "Now, which one?"

The fifth seat hesitated, glanced at both Kira and Matsumoto with regret, and slowly brought the first cup of wine to his lips.

Twenty minutes later, he was completely wasted.

"Hah! You're not so bad, Rangiku!" the fifth seat shouted, holding up his empty cup, indirectly demanding more of Matsumoto's sake. In less than fifteen minutes, he'd jumped to a startling first name basis, had torn off his shirt, and had tried to cop a feel with Matsumoto about three times.

"I know! I'm not bad at all!" Matsumoto echoed, grabbing a sake bottle and refilling the fifth's cup. "Kira! Where are you?"

"…I'm sitting right next to you."

"Kira, who's coming down the hall now?"

Kira glanced to the door and said, "Two seventh seats and an eighth seat."

Matsumoto clapped her hands together. "That's wonderful!"

The fifth seat burst into hysterical laughter. "It really is!" he agreed for absolutely no reason.

Matsumoto pushed from the cushion she was sitting on and stumbled across the room, finding her balance at the threshold of the door. The unsuspecting triad of officers, two men and one woman, stopped immediately at the sight of their drunken superior and quickly bowed out of uncertainty.

"Are you three just getting off from work?" Matsumoto asked innocently, preying first on the men of the group.

No one said anything.

"Oh, I'm just gonna have to assume now," Matsumoto said, setting her glass of sake down and stepping outside. "I need your opinion real fast—your fifth seat friend, uh, Afai—"

"It's Arai!" the fifth seat corrected.

"Arai! He's already given me his valuable say, but I need quantity!"

The three seats shared equally uneasy looks before nodding and entering Kira's room like they'd just entered a torture chamber.

* * *

An hour later, Matsumoto had successfully packed Kira's room to its maximum occupancy of almost fifteen individual bodies, comprised of at least a dozen tenth seats, two or three fourth seats, and the rest, she couldn't remember and didn't necessarily care. And at least half of them were girls.

"Matsumoto, will you marry me?" a fourth seat slurred, leaning into Matsumoto's face and grinning. "The cap'ain's got nothing on me!"

"I'd love to marry you," Matsumoto agreed, sipping her cup graciously, "but where would we live?"

The fourth seat nodded vigorously. "That is a fine question, my wife! We'd live in—"

"You're not marrying her, you ass, I'm marrying her," a seventh seat interrupted, pushing the fourth seat out of the way and taking Matsumoto's hand. "My parents are rich! I already have three houses!"

Matsumoto gasped. "Three houses?!"

"Yes! And one's underwater!"

"How is that possible?!" Matsumoto shouted, shocked, as she searched around for a fresh bottle of liquor.

"I wanna be a bridesmaid, then!" a female tenth seat demanded, waving her hand in the air. "Can I be your bridesmaid?"

Matsumoto bobbed her head up and down. "Of course you can! But for which wedding? Who am I marrying again?"

The fourth seat and the seventh seat yelled together, "Me!"

"Oh, god, I have to go to two weddings? Wait, who has the house underwater?"

Another female officer, this time a fifth seat, replied, "It's okay, really, Matsumoto, you can have two weddings, because then you can decide which wedding is better."

That sounded absolutely reasonable. "You're right! I don't want a crappy wedding!"

It was nearing nine, but time had little meaning to the content of the room. The delicacy of the plan was nonexistent, but it was working—getting a handful of her fellow officers drunk as an attempt to make friends easier was turning into a very successful escapade. Matsumoto just hoped they'd all remember everything tomorrow morning (which, at that moment, didn't look like a possibility).

"Okay, okay, I need to ask the girls something," Matsumoto said, pushing one guy from her with the strength of a sober person.

The males of the room whined unanimously.

"Don't worry! It'll only be for a second!" Matsumoto's hand moved to her sash, and from it she pulled a white piece of paper and held it up for the room to see. "If you're going to be my bridesmaids, I think we need to get to know each other better!"

Naturally, a drunken Matsumoto would rather become friends with her future bridesmaids than with her future husbands.

A random girl asked, "What's that?"

"I want everyone to join the Shinigami Women's Association!"

And if there ever was a killjoy, _that_ was it.

The room hushed immediately, the same drunken faces laughing only minutes ago now casting somber glances to the wooden floor, averting away from Matsumoto's disappointed face and the repercussions they knew would come with it.

Matsumoto frowned. Weren't they drunk enough to sign a piece of paper willingly without reasonable questioning or justification? Wasn't that what drinking was all about?

"C'mon, guys, it's a fun club! Sort of!"

Finally, someone said, "…It's really for girls only?"

"Oh yeah, segregation at its most sexist," Matsumoto joked, pressing the sign up sheet forward.

"And you get off of work early?"

"Yup!"

"Isn't Vice-Captain Yachiru the president?"

"Unfortunately!"

The female officers stared at the sheet of paper with a set of raised eyebrows, like it'd bite them or something, before finally a girl with glasses stepped forward and signed the paper without saying anything.

It was the domino effect Matsumoto had been waiting for, because the moment one girl had signed, _every_ girl wanted to sign.

"Well, if she's signing up, then I guess I will too," another girl announced, grabbing the pen and scribbling her name down.

"What? If you're joining, I'm joining too!"

"I wanna join!"

"Me too!"

"Hand the paper over, ladies!"

"I'm signing up next!"

Matsumoto crossed her arms and sent a smug look in Kira's direction, who sighed and took another sip of sake.

* * *

The next morning, Matsumoto strolled confidently into Vice-Captain Nanao's office and slammed a very filled sign up sheet onto her desk.

"We're gonna need more chairs at meetings," Matsumoto announced, smirking, and left the room without a final word.

* * *

**A/N: **I know most of you are wondering why I posted a ShunsuiNanao one-shot instead of updating this earlier (which you should ready AFTER you review this), but I really didn't mean to. I promise updates will become more frequent after next week!

Dude, I can't believe this is the tenth chapter. Next chapter's gonna instigate a better plot. Yay!


	11. Only Good For Metaphors

The first thing she killed was a rat, and it was on accident.

"God, I didn't mean to," a considerably younger Matsumoto defended in-between tightly sealed lips. She crossed her arms and then uncrossed them, shifted weight to her left hip, and then threw her hands up into the air. "Well, what am I supposed to do with it?"

A younger Gin watched, barely interested, and said, "Rats're disgutin' anyway. They're only good fer metaphors." And then he picked up a piece of wood and used it as a shovel, pushing the dead rat out the door of their pathetic little shack.

They were getting too old to live there together, too cramped, too matured, too many elbows and legs.

And then they stared at a wall and said nothing, thinking about dead rats and metaphors.

* * *

"Hey."

From a third party narrative, Matsumoto could see how skinny her shoulders looked. She saw the spine of her back and the dip of her waist, the caps of her knees and the corners of her elbows. She could hear her stomach growling, see the dry eyes of tearless facades, watch two young kids melt into nothing.

"Rangiku."

She was used to this dream. The rat she killed as an adolescent foreshadowed her next chapter. She never forgot it.

"Ya ain't gonna be happy with the time."

Time.

Time had no meaning in dreams.

With an expressionless face, Matsumoto stirred and opened her eyes, her vision blurred as she looked for the familiarity of another new morning. A body was against hers, a mouth pressed to her neck. Gin smiled and breathed in her scent.

Matsumoto sighed. "I'm late."

Gin snickered. "No one's gonna reprimand ya."

Four months.

That languid morning marked the fourth month of servitude under Division Three. It symbolized perseverance and an insane dose of audacity, yet in a dull twist, there wasn't much to celebrate. In four months, Hitsugaya had appealed twice, Yamamoto refused further discussion, and the entire Seireitei now considered Matsumoto a Third officer, in both division and ranking. There was very little room to turn back.

"I don't even know where I'm supposed to be this morning," Matsumoto grumbled, pressing the palms of her hands against her face.

The last month in general was a mess of incoherency and distortion. Matsumoto's nights belonged to Gin when he was there, and things were starting to change in subtle ways; Matsumoto couldn't find the articulation or order to explain it.

She glanced over to her left and saw a sake bottle from the previous night, standing still against the clutter of the backdrop.

Without thinking, she reached for it and took hold of its neck. But before she even had a chance to drink from it, Gin had leaned over and knocked it out of her hand.

"Don't drink," he said, and Matsumoto said nothing when he pushed his mouth on hers, tucking his hands behind her neck and pulling her face upward.

The bottle was empty, so his intervention hadn't done anything but add to the litter of his room. When Gin pulled back, he pushed from her and sat to his knees before climbing to his feet. "I gotta idea," he said, collecting his pants and tying them on.

Matsumoto sat back, amused, and watched the man retrieve his uniform. "Is it a good one?"

Gin looked up and smiled. "It's an interestin' one."

* * *

Matsumoto was over three hundred years old, and death and nudity were two extremities she had relatively no problem with—unless the dead corpse was a friend's, or the naked body was ugly. Then there were problems.

The rat she killed as an adolescent had been an accident, though in the long run it was more or less a trial-and-error deal. She'd shot kido at it, fried the little thing, and decided: if you had kido, and you had rats, kido could kill rats. It was an amazing discovery, which eventually transitioned into the discovery of dead hollows and dead comrades.

If death be a shinigami, she was a shinigami. (Oh, the irony.)

"Where're we going?" Matsumoto asked, following Gin through the heat-waves of the summer day.

Gin smiled. "Far from here."

They were beyond the walls of the Seireitei, somewhere on the outskirts dipped between hills and trees and more hills. They were undeniably ditching work, and from the distance they were making, they wouldn't be back for the rest of the day. But she couldn't _deny_ her captain's orders, now could she?

They stopped halfway through a canyon, where a semi-lake of water lay, cold, crisp, and alone.

Matsumoto smirked. "Swimming? Are you serious?"

Gin was already taking off his clothes. "Ya don't wanna swim with me?"

"You could've warned me. I didn't bring anything to swim in." Matsumoto dipped a hand into the water's surface.

Gin grinned. "I ain't gotta problem with that."

Matsumoto watched him undress before undoing the white sash of her own hakama. "Yeah, you wouldn't."

The canyon held a distinct nostalgic feel, and as Matsumoto sank into the cooling water, she realized they'd played there as kids centuries ago. The deja-vu turned into familiarity, dull in the back of her head as she tried to recall their childhood days of summer heat and canyon trips.

"I can't believe you remembered this place," Matsumoto murmured, the water melting into her neck as she leaned her head back. "I'd forgotten all about it."

Gin moved to her in a quick stroke, his chin just above the water's surface. "Hot days make me remember a lotta things."

Not a lie. Their home as children never had a happy medium—either sweltering heat or biting cold, scrap-booking their memories into an unvaried range of discomfort.

With daring and a little tenacity, Gin draped his hands across Matsumoto's waist and reeled her closer, smiling. "Ya used ta follow me everywhere."

Matsumoto threw him an amused glance. 'Everywhere' was the exaggeration of the century—Gin was gone too much for her to follow him _anywhere_, and besides, his accusation didn't apply to their current circumstances anymore.

"I'm going to have to disagree, Captain Ichimaru," Matsumoto sang, and she left the argument at that.

Gin's grin never died. He pressed his face into the nape of her neck and said, "Would ya come with me now?"

It took a second for Matsumoto to register Gin's implications before she sent him an incredulous look. "What is _that_ supposed mean?"

Lifting his head from her shoulder, Gin pushed back slightly and stared at her like she was a fox's prey. "If I left, would ya follow me?"

_Whoa_. Even fifty miles from the Seireitei couldn't bring Matsumoto's courage above a whisper. She raised a pair of eyebrows and hissed, "Why're you asking that?"

Gin leaned in. "It's hyp'thetical, and yer beatin' around the bush, Rangiku."

More like beating around his freaking head. Was Gin implying he wanted to leave the Seireitei? And go where? The Seiretei was the pinnacle of success, grandeur living, _happiness_. How the hell could anyone go higher, do better?

Matsumoto watched his face for signs she probably couldn't read anymore. She found nothing.

"I don't know," Matsumoto confessed; when in the last trifecta of centuries had she even thought of following Gin anywhere? If anything had changed, people followed _her_ now.

Gin smiled, leaned forward, and said, "Good."

Uncertainty made clay a little more malleable.

* * *

**A/N: **I incorporated the title! And I am in dear, dear need of inspiration. BADLY. Short chapter, can you forgive me?

I know I haven't updated in a month, but I've actually written four chapters, just out of order, which is why it's taken so long (so technically I'm on track, just not publicly). This chapter was written twice (first one sucked hard), and the other two are ready, I just need to proof read them.

Unfortunately, the next chapter is very theoretical, dark, and a bit sexual, and the chapter after that isn't any happier, but I promise we'll get to the fun stuff soon!

Is anyone still out there?? Do I hear echos? Has anyone else killed a rat with kido?

**EDIT: I am not implying Matsumoto would follow Gin. I believe she would NEVER follow Gin, but I'm hypothesizing that she might if provoked for the correct reasons. I'm very particular in the way I characterize her, and she is neither dependent nor a follower. **


	12. The Hollow Men

_We are the hollow men  
We are the stuffed men  
Leaning together  
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!  
Our dried voices, when  
We whisper together  
Are quiet and meaningless  
As wind in dry grass  
Or rats' feet over broken glass  
In our dry cellar_

* * *

In Soul Society, the concept of worth started with hunger and stopped with death.

"In our Soul Society, ya either got reitsu or ya don't, and if ya don't, yer no good, ya ain't ever gonna be useful," Gin whispered hotly into Matsumoto's ear, his body straddling hers as he made clear Soul Society's twisted ideology.

A person's value was gauged off of how hungry they got and what they did about it. Hunger meant power. Power meant military-availability.

"There're two sorts of people," Gin murmured, trailing his mouth down the nape of Matsumoto's neck, "There's the hungry, n' then there's everyone else."

The foundation of Soul Society rested with the theory that when a human died, there was an off chance he'd rebirth with spiritual energy, become a shinigami, and save the world. But like most theories, they only worked in abstract.

"The hungry either die or they enroll," Gin continued, "cause what'cha gonna do with energy but waste it? What do the hungry do but eat or starve?"

His breath died off as he kissed her mouth, parading with tongue and teeth and lashing actions like he was engraining his taste into her.

Gin pulled back from Matsumoto; he did not smile; he said, "Soul Society breeds these here shinigami so that it can continue ta prosper. Without shinigami, souls ain't gonna be saved. Without souls, Soul Society would be irrel'vant, unneeded."

He ran his hands up Matsumoto's stomach, finding rest just beneath her chest. "What would a society be without a cycle? Soul Society plays God ta the dead and expects a golden paycheck from 'em in return."

He furthered, "But what if ya ain't got no money?" He pressed himself against Matsumoto, his hands lacing hers like a lock.

The intensity of the room, made hot through tossing bodies and the warm night air, increased with the hiss of excitement and the weight of conspiracy. Gin's body rolled to the side, and he lay on his back with eyes at the ceiling, watching the reel of images he called the future play before him.

He whispered, "From the beginnin' a dead man's got no say—if ya ain't hungry, ya ain't got no power, no worth. If yer hungry, ya either starve or ya turn inta a military dog."

He bawled a fist and hung it above his body, his pale skin meshing with the white ceiling. "What's the point of not makin' everyone hungry? Why can't everyone have strong power n' be a shinigami? It's 'cause Soul Society needs poverty."

He continued, "If ya place enough people without the need fer food in one area, there ain't gonna be food at all. The hungry starve. Poverty perpet'ates hunger—n' the future shinigami recognize their situation n' get all ambitious. They leave fer the hope of gettin' into the Seireitei."

In Soul Society, hunger was a motivator. The double standard it portrayed both fueled anger while distinguishing future goals—to those without hunger, it was a curse, a disease; to those with hunger, it was a disguised blessing: hunger meant power.

Yet, it also meant subordination.

"From the start, shinigami're puppets, lil' dolls—militarized by the fear of starvin' ta death. We can't do nothin' about it."

Gin's fist dropped to the sheets around them. With the smile long gone, he smirked and tried to find the amusement again, but a_ cage_ was never very entertaining. With a tainted tone, he said, "The Seireitei's soldiers are nothin' but hollow men and women, fightin' a war that ain't ever gonna stop. What'cha gonna do? Yer gonna fight; it ain't like ya got a home ta return ta."

"So, ya just keep on fightin', people keep starvin', and the people without the hunger, why, they just sit there n' wonder why they had ta die in the first place."

Gin leaned over and took a piece of Matsumoto's hair; he held it like gold. He watched her lines, her pulse, her lips, with a delicacy he rarely practiced. He moved closer, tying his arms around her and pulling the side of her face against his lips. He murmured, "'Cause who would wanna come ta hell when they die?"

* * *

It was hours after Gin went to sleep that Matsumoto even thought about anything he'd said.

There was something fundamentally wrong with Soul Society; everyone knew there was. The fact that you died only to live a possible life worse than your previous one was considerably depressing. Soul Society, their Heaven, was no heaven at all, but the prospect of infinitely full stomachs sure made it seem that way. Two-thirds of the Rukongai was bathed in poverty, perpetuating a rabid lifestyle of violence, fear, and loneliness. Who would die for that?

Matsumoto traced a finger over her bare stomach, eyes half-open, watching nothing.

When she was a kid, she hated Soul Society. What was there to look forward to but a day all alone and hungry?

She had found Soul Society frustratingly unfair; the bitterness that shaped her being was uncontrollable. She could feel the hunger so many could not, and it didn't seem justified. Soul Society was no heaven; it let its citizens die again and again and again.

Matsumoto drew her hand from her navel to Gin's lower back, outlining his shape until she reached his shoulders.

Gin was a paradox of an unhappy person that was easily amused; from his amusement came a twisted sort of content, and then what did you have but a sadistic man? Gin's scruples with Soul Society's basis were nothing new—but the extent of his discontent that he'd shown tonight was something Matsumoto had never witnessed before.

It made her heart hurt in an unexplainable sort of way.

"Hey," Matsumoto hushed, brushing her nails over the back of Gin's neck. She trailed a kiss against the side of his mouth, and the man next to her stirred. "…Aren't you happy now?"

Gin lazily opened his eyes and stared into the darkness of Matsumoto's face.

She kissed his jaw and settled her upper body against Gin's chest, hiding her arms behind his shoulders. "We climbed the ladder. We got here, and we're successful. We aren't starving anymore."

Her words were honest but uncomforting, because it was a truth told too many times; the consoling effect was whitewashed and worn and a little tattered.

Gin smiled, lifted his head, and kissed her for a very long time.

When he pulled away, he said, "Soldiers'll always be starvin'. And it ain't gonna ever be changed." He cupped the back of Matsumoto's head and said, "Ya can only get out of it by dyin', and then yer replaced like it don't matter."

"You're saying all we are is a product from an assembly line, then?" Matsumoto murmured, smoothing her hands over Gin's chest as she sat up slightly. "We save souls. Our fundamentals are messed up, but we are good people," she finished, dipping forward again and drawing a kiss from Gin's mouth.

Gin edged his hands around Matsumoto's face, pulling her closer and deepening the kiss as his tongue laced the back of her teeth. He left for breath and whispered, "Ya n' me, all the Gotei 13, we're stuck in a cycle of savin' people and then lettin' them live in shit, 'cause in the end, all we do is cram bodies into the Rukongai, without food n' jobs and watch 'em die. And then we do it again.

"The people without the hunger, without power—they're useless, a waste of space. They take up room n' dawdle around. They're unwanted. They're better off cold in the ground."

Matsumoto shut her eyes and sat up completely, the sheets from her body falling into piles around them. The disagreement in her brow was obvious. Gin's hands left her face and went to her back, rubbing softly.

"This is our _job_, Gin. It's what we do, it's just how things are," Matsumoto asserted, trying to make sense of the situation.

"And we can't get outta it. 'Cause where else do shinigami go?" he hissed, pressing his mouth and tongue against Matsumoto's collar bone.

Matsumoto did not know. Where would she be right now without the Gotei 13 occupying her? Would she be gone? Would she be a mess of skin and bones lying facedown dead in a dirt-painted desert?

The last thing Gin said before pushing them both to the mattress was, "Soul Society…" His voice turned to mumbles, and the last words of his sentence were lost to passion as he fell atop Matsumoto and crushed his mouth to hers.

Though in between the whispers and gasps, Matsumoto swore she heard him say, "Soul Society ain't gonna last forever."

* * *

**A/N: **Gin is not a righteous character, and it bugs me when people write him as one. I'm not saying this ideology is Gin's motivation for acting the way he does—actually, I think he does half of that crap because he's bored—but Gin's _smart_, we know he's a prodigy, and Matsumoto's not stupid, either, so it's going to take a certain way of thinking to keep the cogs turning, if you get what I mean.

Also, I hope I got across that Gin _does not care about the well being of Soul Society's citizens_. He only recognizes the state they're in, because he was in it once, too.

Anyway, **Hanyou Hitokiri** and I have been geeking out with awesome discussions about Matsumoto and Gin, so that's been a lot of fun. XD

I hope you see the irony of "we are the hollow men". The poem is from The Hollow Men by T.S. Eliot. **Disclaimer**: Don't own it!

What'd you guys think? Believable philosophy?


	13. The Unfortunate Case of Ken Soma

Four days later on a night patrol, Matsumoto struck a hollow between the eyes and watched it die.

"I don't know," Matsumoto mumbled to the sector of Division Three scouts under her command, "take the south-east side near the river and patrol on the hills just around it. And take those dogs with you _please_."

A series of shouts from subordinates echoed through the valley, and shortly after twenty or so shinigami and their dogs disappeared.

Matsumoto rubbed the bridge of her nose and swallowed thickly. The night was silent, the air was cold, summer was done and dead, and late autumn was making itself known through brittle leaves and gusty winds.

She hadn't talked to Gin since that night; he'd disappeared again, and no one knew where he was. Kira was the last to see him.

"So, where'd he go?" Matsumoto had asked, cornering Kira not out of concern but out of a growing frustration she couldn't seem to kill.

Kira, in a noticeably foul mood, said, "I don't know. Why would I know? I never know."

Now, both were stuck on night patrol without a captain.

Matsumoto pinched the bridge of her nose harder.

It was only a matter of days before Gin's ideology settled into the abyss of Matsumoto's stomach. His words weren't poison, or she'd of been dead long ago; his words weren't wrong or right; they were subjectivist, which anyone could expect when dealing with an opinion. There was a lot of unhappiness with Soul Society, hence Soul Society was under a hidden scrutiny of raised eyebrows.

As unsettling as it was, Matsumoto agreed with him. She wasn't surprised, because Soul's Society's corruption wasn't groundbreaking news, either.

Soul Society was stuck in a cycle of double-speak.

_A place where no one goes hungry_. Because you're jumped and robbed before you have a chance to starve.

No soul had a choice—It was Soul Society or it was Hell, and even then, the decision was based off a morality rubric. If you're good by a shinigami's standards, it's Soul Society; what a joke.

"Excuse me?"

Matsumoto's hands dropped from her face, and she glanced unalarmed to the owner of the voice.

A pathetic looking man, young but balding, stout yet somehow thin, was standing behind her, arms crossed and shivering. His clothes were tattered—a gray suit and a red tie—and he'd lost a shoe. From his chest dangled a single chain. He was dead.

"You must've been the soul hollows have been getting frisky over," Matsumoto said, turning to him with little expression.

A look of ambivalence crossed the man's face. He said, "I'm a bit confused—could you tell me, am I dead?"

The question was almost funny, because how could he not know? As Matsumoto stepped closer to him, she wasn't sure if anyone had ever asked her that before.

Matsumoto breathed a laugh and replied, "If you can see me, you are."

Surprisingly, a look of relief played over the man's eyes. His shoulders relaxed. "That makes sense. I didn't understand what those monsters were. At least I know I'm not crazy!"

Monsters. Hollows were monsters, yet why did that suddenly sound so wrong?

Already in the processes of unsheathing her sword, Matsumoto started on the usual speech all officers were under oath to give whenever ferrying a new soul from the living world, "I'm here to transfer you to—"

"Heaven?" the man interrupted, stretching his arms above his head. "Really, heaven? I've always wanted to see heaven."

Heaven. Now, that wasn't right. If Hollows were monsters, and Shinigami were angels, was Soul Society heaven?

"Uh, well, it's called Soul Society," Matsumoto corrected, in no mood for the mother-role she knew she could play well. "It's where souls go after they've died."

"Huh. Soul Society," the man echoed, sitting down on the grass. "I've never heard of that. But it sounds exciting." Matsumoto watched the words role from the man's mouth. "It's gotta be better than here. Living's not all it's cracked up to be."

Matsumoto wished he hadn't sat down. This was taking too long.

"My name's Ken Soma," he announced, "What's your name?"

Generally taken aback, Matsumoto said coldly, "Rangiku Matsumoto."

Soma smiled. "This is really exciting. I'm so tired. But this is really exciting. I've been waiting for heaven for a while now, you know." He paused, waiting for Matsumoto to say something, anything, and when she didn't, he continued with, "I couldn't pay rent, haven't paid rent for three months, and my job's gone under, so this is really exciting. After my wife died, I thought things would never get better."

Matsumoto's stomach lurched. "Your wife died?"

Soma's head sunk back until he was staring at the night sky. "A bus hit her. She was a model. But now I'll see her in heaven. Gosh, I'm so tired."

Matsumoto's brow furrowed gently, because she knew the man would never find his wife in Soul Society.

Soma smiled again. "This is great. I really need this. There's nothing for me here, Ms. Matsumoto. I'm thankful I'm going to heaven, because I can start over. Thank you."

Heaven was not Soul Society. They were not synonymous, and yet this man somehow equalized them like a two way street. What a disappointment, what a tragedy he'd be in for when he realized poverty, hardships, and the remote possibility of saving the world were his only options.

"What's it like?" Soma asked, averting his attention to Matsumoto. "What's this Soul Society like?"

And for the life of her, the only thing Matsumoto could say was, "It's a place where you never go hungry…"

* * *

That morning when patrol finished without a bang, Matsumoto crawled into bed and slept for seven hours like a dead body.

The sun was setting when she woke up.

The ceiling of her room was offset white, old from years of use and unexciting. She watched it with exhausted eyes, muscles tired and soul uncomfortable. She felt incomplete, like something had been lost, and she struggled to illustrate the missing piece if only to find it again. The ceiling stared back with nothing to say but _clean me_, and so Matsumoto pushed her body over and fell back asleep for another hour.

She dreamt of nothing but a black background, and when she awoke, the image didn't change. The room was swallowed in black; the sun had set some odd hour ago, and a weird sense of timelessness surrounded her mentality. Feeling drugged and unexplainably sluggish, Matsumoto justified her laziness through necessity for sleep and rest. But her growling stomach eventually forced her from her futon.

Matsumoto grew up knowing the difference between ignorance and naiveté, but now they were blending together with an alarming sense of confusion. Her naiveté as a child thinned through wisdom brought on by experience, but her ignorance of Soul Society's hypocrisy was self-induced, because as a kid, she knew how wrong Soul Society was. But now, the same naiveté she had as a child was obnoxiously appearing again.

She was naïve for thinking the Rukongai wasn't her business because she wasn't a part of it anymore.

Or was she ignorant because she never noticed it still was?

Matsumoto walked through the halls of Division Three and went to a half-kitchen used to heat things up and wash things down. The floor was cold, the entire closet of a room, cold. Water poured down into the bowl she placed beneath the faucet of the kitchen's sink, watching the water fill until it sprung over the sides.

Like every other solider, she ignored Soul Society's condition only because she looked the other way, where no one died, no one starved, and no one wished desperately for life again.

She tried to find that side, but it only looked darker than it did before.

The faucet stopped, leaving a sink full of water and a pair of eyes staring into it.

"You okay?" Kira said from the doorway, standing in the center of the threshold and watching her.

Matsumoto blinked and glanced at him. "Why wouldn't I be?"

Kira shifted, feigned empathy, and whispered, "Captain Hitsugaya's here to see you."

And indeed, when Matsumoto walked into the common room, a single Hitsugaya was staring at her with a frown.

He looked taller. He wasn't, but he looked it.

"Hi, captain," Matsumoto recited, arms crossed and hip out. "Your visit's surprising."

Hitsugaya had his captain's robe off, which made his body nearly disappear against the dark of the room. He glanced from the ground to Matsumoto's face and said, "I'm off to patrol this morning and tonight, so now seemed like the best time."

Neither of them moved to sit down; the news coming needed no formality. She looked around the room, swallowed, and then smiled wanly. "How's the Tenth?"

"Ridiculous."

Matsumoto smirked. "I heard the Eighth's been helping you out a lot lately."

Even Hitsugaya threw in a half-smile and said, "Unfortunately." Then he mirrored Matsumoto and crossed his arms as well, gaze averted to the side. "Are…things working out alright? Here, I mean."

She couldn't say things were bad, outside the fact that her allegiance to Soul Society was founded on corrupt politics and an unequal distribution of wealth. She shrugged before saying, "I'm used to it, I guess."

Hitsugaya nodded. "That's good."

"Yeah…"

An awkward silence. Then, Hitsugaya stepped forward slowly. "I think you know why I'm here."

"I have an idea."

The look on Hitsugaya's face switched briefly to a look of concern, foreshadowing the bad news to come. "General Yamamoto's asked that I find a new vice-captain."

Of course he would. There was only so long a division could go without a second-in-command, whether by law or by efficiency. Five months without a VC was generally unheard of—there wasn't much Squad Ten could do to keep a position like that open for a long time.

Hitsugaya's direct words did not hurt as much as their implications did—she was not getting her job back. There would be no further appeals.

She was stuck.

* * *

At ten that evening, she left the Seireitei because she needed to breathe.

The streets of the Rukongai were crowded even at night, surplus bodies crammed against walls, asleep on the ground because they had no homes, no connections, and no aspirations. They represented a mixture of hopelessness and desperation, clawing at passing pedestrians like the lowest beggars, dirty hands, dirty faces, and dry throats.

Bars were opening, but even then, they were spare in number—their lights dimmed between bright and dark, flickering until a customer dropped a bill. But like most of District 76, they were more or less dead.

There were no kids out.

Matsumoto glanced at the dirt-covered ground and tried to remember her life as a child. Pieces of Gin, a shack that barely stood up, and lonely nights characterized her adolescence, but it had been over three hundred years ago, and she could remember very little. The ache of despair as a kid was overwhelming; the idea that tomorrow you'd probably die (and then you'd be replaced) was enough to contemplate the bottom of a lake, if only to hurry the inevitable up.

What district had she lived in? Seventy-nine? Eighty?

It didn't matter anymore, they all looked the same, carried the same death toll, smelt like copper and dust. There was the Rukongai and the Seireitei—that's all anyone needed to know to find direction or completely lose it.

"Hey, honey, ya wanna come home with me tonight?" a man slurred, because who _wouldn't_ want to go home with her?

Matsumoto ignored the man when his friend whispered "Man, that's a shinigami. Ya don't mess with the shinigami."

That's right. You don't mess with the shinigami. Hollows messed with shinigami. Souls just watched and waited. What else were they supposed to do?

That was life. Expectations stopped at death and _who's getting dinner tonight? _Anticipating anything else would most likely make one recognize their caged situation, and then what was left but despair?

Matsumoto passed down the streets, watching her feet move her body, watching the ground run beneath her, listening to the stomachs that never went hungry, the cries of the poor, and the stories of those who happened to live a day at a time.

She turned the corner, and her foot hit a body.

The dark of alley masked most of the body's identity, but it wasn't enough to hide the stab wounds and slit throat of the corpse. The blood was stained into the cloth of the ripped clothing he wore, the neck's cut encrusted with dried red. His belongings had been rummaged through, torn apart, and tossed aside when nothing valuable appeared, proving his worth only started with the items he carried.

The guy was probably happier off dead.

"Poor Soma, didn't even have a chance," a woman said, walking passed Matsumoto with her son. "C'mon, we gotta get him away from our shop before he starts to smell…"

Soma.

The body was lifted, and into the light, Ken Soma's face, bloodied and dusty, looked excited, looked tired, looked dead.

That was life?

That was life.

Without a word, Matsumoto nodded her head, paid respect through a downward glance, and disappeared.

* * *

At eleven that night, Matsumoto found Gin sleeping in his room.

With a hushed breath and tired eyes, she brought her hand to Gin's face and whispered, "I know the hypocrisy, I recognize it, but this is our life. The system isn't gonna change. "

Gin, who was never really asleep, glanced at her.

Matsumoto ran her hands downward underneath the opening of Gin's shirt and said, "But I want to hear what you have to say. I want to hear all of it."

And maybe right there—that was the beginning. Gin knew, and his smile stretched from eye to eye.

* * *

**A/N: **The ending to this was actually completely different than what I originally had, but for the sake of Matsumoto's character, I HAD to change it.

There are errors, I will fix them soon. I really don't want to get a beta. TT

You get the Soma thing, though, right? Guy with bad life, dies, only to die a worse death in the "heaven" that was supposed to save him. I hate OCs (I don't care how small they are, I HATE them), but he was a necessity, unfortunately. And then Hitsugaya announcing he needed to find Matsumoto's "replacement" was supposed to add to Matsumoto's stress.

Thanks for all the wonderful comments! I really appreciate the feedback!

(I'm taking a break for a bit to focus on some stuff! Hang tight!)


	14. Lunch With Whales

Considering the insane relationship Division Three and Division Eleven seemed to endorse, it was not surprising that Matsumoto spent half her time standing outside Zaraki's office.

Delivering papers.

To a man who took no deliveries.

Checking her sanity at the door, Matsumoto wearily stepped into Zaraki's office and witnessed a general display of brutality common to Division Eleven. A tall soldier, muscular, manly, the perfect recipe for a Squad Eleven subordinate, was thrown into a wall by Zaraki's arm.

"Thank you, captain, sir!" the surprisingly conscious soldier declared, standing to his feet in one piece and bowing. He left the office without a second phrase.

Whatever had just gone down was either a screwed up exhibition of captain-subordinate bonding or a total dose of insanity.

"Uh, Captain Zaraki?" Matsumoto said, announcing her presence with as much tact as humanly possible. All things aside, she did not want to be thrown into a wall.

Zaraki, who had absolutely not noticed Matsumoto, glanced down at her without interest. "What?"

Matsumoto cleared her throat. "I need these documents signed for Captain Ichimaru, if you wouldn't mind, sir."

"What the hell does Ichimaru want me to sign?"

Birthday cards. Really, how the hell would she know? Matsumoto clicked her tongue and forced a smile. "I think they're comradery agreements, captain."

The wall that was Zaraki Kenpachi grunted, turned around, and left the office in a series of loud, echoing steps. The building shook as he walked, and very soon his entire form (miraculously) disappeared.

Silence.

_Great_.

"He's not coming back, is he?" Matsumoto mumbled to no one but an empty office.

"NOPE!" a girlish voice cried out, and from there a pair of feet proceeded to smash directly into the side of Matsumoto's _neck_.

Without a chance to even feel startled, Matsumoto fled sideways and nearly fell over, the soles of the attacker's feet crushing into her neck and pushing her backwards. Yachiru laughed, jumped down and away from Matsumoto, and smiled. "Hiya, Division…uh…Three or Ten!"

Matsumoto, her vision temporarily interrupted with flashing lights, yelled, "Ow, oh my god, _ow_, you little—" She caught her final words in time before letting them slip, sealing her lips shut as she painfully rubbed her neck. "What was _that_ for?"

Yachiru grinned and jumped to the surface of Zaraki's desk. "I don't know! Oooh, what'd you drop?"

Yachiru was staring at the floor, and a second later, so was Matsumoto. The documents in need of Zaraki's signature were scattered all across the wooden planks, out of order and probably ruined.

Usually this meant it was time to go drinking.

"Uh…they're documents. Really boring. For your captain." Wait. No. She shouldn't have said who the recipient was. Mistake. Oh dear.

Because it only took an eye blink for Yachiru to gather them in her hands and flash step to the door. "Oh, yay, a delivery, I can do it! Actually, I'm going to eat something first, and then I'll do it! Well, maybe I'll take a nap after I eat, and then I'll give my Ken-chan these _important_ documents!"

"No, Vice-Captain Yachiru—" Matsumoto reached for the door, like it would actually do something, but the pink haired piece of evil was gone before her arm had even stretched out fully.

Oh, great.

It was likely those documents would never see the light of day ever again.

With a sigh, Matsumoto slumped into Zaraki's desk and stared at the ceiling. Well, now what?

"My dear Matsumoto, are you the new captain of Division Eleven? I wasn't even aware!"

Matsumoto, captain? God, imagine her attention to leisure activity in combination with the disastrous killing spree of Squad Eleven, and you'd have yourself a regular world war. With little interest, Matsumoto glanced over to the threshold of the office door and saw a pale as ever Ukitake standing in it, arms filled with legal crap no one wanted to deal with.

Matsumoto moved to the door, bowing slightly in regards to the superior standing before her. "Business as usual, eh?"

"Unfortunately, it is. Though Captain Zaraki's clearly not here. Or coming back, I presume," Ukitake replied, setting the packet of paper onto the corner of Zaraki's desk. "Off to lunch?"

Matsumoto rubbed the back of her neck and sighed. "Yeah, then I'm off for patrol until eight tonight. Long, typically uneventful day."

Ukitake smiled. "Splendid!" he cheered, not necessarily in regards to Matsumoto's long, typically uneventful day, but rather, her lunch occupation. "Would you care to join me for lunch?"

Ukitake's knack for conversation, in addition to his uncanny way of always knowing _exactly_ what to say, were enough of a combination to reel Matsumoto in any day. Her affiliation with Division Three was starting to suffocate her innately cheerful personality—the dismal, almost hopeless feeling of jailed efficacy was taking its toll. And besides, she missed her drunken days with a generally more sober Ukitake and a feverously wasted Shunsui.

Matsumoto smiled. "Count me in."

* * *

It just so happened the lunch Matsumoto had in mind was not quite the lunch Ukitake did.

The Division Thirteen dining commons were filled with no one but a slightly hunched over, rather studious looking Captain Aizen.

Ukitake motioned a wave. "I have another lunch guest for us! I'm afraid I found her in the depths of Division Eleven, and I couldn't certainly leave her there," he justified, nodding his head in Aizen's direction warmly.

Captain Aizen, a friend to all shinigami in a geeky sort of admirable way, was hovering over a generally unappealing stack of habitual paperwork, his thick black glasses at the tip of his nose.

When they sat down at the table, Matsumoto offered her salutations politely enough to avoid actual conversation. _When was the last time I talked with this man? Have I ever? _The last time she'd even spoken to Captain Aizen directly had to have been close to a year ago!

Aizen, the unofficial king of masked sentiments, grinned softly and said, "It's nice to see you, Matsumoto."

Generally impressed that Aizen had remembered her, Matsumoto felt a smug sense of appreciation for the brainy captain sitting in front of her.

"Sōsuke! I didn't expect you here!" a slightly gruff voice called out, and all three of the table's inhabitants craned their necks to see a tall pink hunk of man walking in their direction.

_Captain Kyoraku's here_? Matsumoto thought, suddenly feeling like the fish in a whale's ocean.

Shunsui waved, sat next to Aizen, and leaned across the table to Matsumoto. "And lookie, Rangiku's here—what an interesting day!"

Ukitake blinked. "Shunsui, I thought you weren't free for lunch?"

Shunsui cast a look of deviance toward the white-haired captain. "No, _Nanao_ said I'm not free for lunch. _I_, in my own state of personal preference, am perfectly free for lunch. Now," he said, glancing back to Matsumoto and taking off his hat, "Where in the world has my favorite ex-eighth officer disappeared to?"

The bowls of Soul Society's darkest truth would've sounded incredibly korny, so Matsumoto justified her absent state of being by saying, "Oh, I've been swamped with the amazing responsibility of inducting the idea of fun into Squad Three's jurisdiction."

Shunsui nodded vigorously. "Oh, yes? And how's that going?"

With little regard to both Aizen and Ukitake, Matsumoto replied, "I've gotten at least half the squad wasted."

"And the other half?"

"I'm still trying to get them to look at me."

A chuckle resonated softly throughout the table, and Matsumoto was slightly surprised that it belonged to Aizen.

"That does seem like Division Three, I'm afraid," Aizen said kindly, "But you seem to be adjusting well."

Matsumoto could beg to differ. "It's my specialty."

"That entire ordeal is certainly rotten," Ukitake chimed in, setting his pair of utensils down. "The Central 46's justification wasn't a very clear one."

Shunsui, taking on a more sober air, agreed. "You were spun for the worst, Rangiku. I like to keep as far from politics as I can, but your treatment wasn't equitable with the crime, or lack of one, I should say."

As appreciated as their sympathy was, it came too late to actually mean anything. Matsumoto, although an eighth officer born and bred, had a six-month Division Three scar down her back, and that wasn't going to change because a pair of captains disagreed with her sentence.

"I know it's late, but I could still try and talk with the old man general, see what's up, if he can do anything," Shunsui offered, and no one at the table noticed Aizen's gaze darken.

Matsumoto didn't relent; she shook her head and stretched out her arms. "It's fine—if I try to find some awkward form of positivity from this, it's that I only have about a year and a half before I can transfer. And I'm not sure I really want too, either."

Her statement surprised the table immediately. Ukitake leaned in. "Is that so?"

Aizen, from beneath the stare of a content captain, narrowed his eyes.

Ukitake and co. were certainly not the only ones shocked at Matsumoto's staggering confession. A wave of abnormal ambivalence settled into the core of Matsumoto's stomach as she realized she might not want to transfer after the two-year restriction was lifted.

In a way, she was growing comfortable. Division Three was not Division Ten, but its solidarity, though cold and unwavering, had an opening for her, and she'd taken it in the form of Gin's relationship. Six months in, and she was used to the night patrols, the Kage, the annoyingly tiny third-seat bedroom; what had been foreign before was her home now.

"I don't know," Matsumoto continued, "After Captain Hitsugaya found out he needed to certify a new VC, everything cemented itself."

"I wasn't aware Hitsugaya was looking for a new second-seat," Aizen announced, though in truth he'd found out about Hitsugaya's decision at least a week before Matsumoto had.

Shunsui sat back, a hand at his chin. "Neither was I."

"A captain with no desire for a second-in command tends not to advertise well," Ukitake reasoned, and the table said no more.

Lunch resolved with Nanao storming the room and politely yanking Shunsui out of the dinning hall by his ear. Ukitake, taking that as a sign to return to his own work as well, bade both Matsumoto and Aizen goodbye before leaving the two alone.

"I believe we're going in the same direction?" Aizen asked, holding the door open for Matsumoto.

Heading west, both Aizen and Matsumoto fell into conversation as they approached the horizon of Squad Thirteen and descended into the start of Squad One, aiming for their destinations of the Third and Fifth.

The entire lunch period had been a bit of an oddity altogether—Matsumoto had never eaten with Aizen, let alone had a one-on-one conversation with him in the midst of travel. She'd always thought of him as a professional academic stuck in the hordes of the military, but it was clear he was a soldier, one way or the other.

"Your demotion was unfair," Aizen said in an almost arbitrary way, turning a corner and delving into the center of Division One.

Touched by his consideration, Matsumoto waved off the sympathy in an almost embarrassed fashion. "It's over now; I'm okay where I am, really." God, her affiliation with Division Three must have been as unbelievable as a compassionate Soi Fong was.

Aizen chuckled, good natured. "Very well, I can see when a topic turns old."

And the topic was indeed an old one. She'd had enough of the quiet gossip and awkward stares to last her for a good decade, because quite frankly, she was a little embarrassed over the topic. It wasn't like she was bitter, but talking about injuring thirty subordinate soldiers wasn't something she opened a beer over.

"It looks like it's going to be winter soon," Aizen said, remarking, amazingly enough, on something as droll as the weather. And yet somehow Matsumoto found it an unbelievably perfect statement.

"I'm not a big fan of winter," she replied, and rightfully so. She'd nearly lost all her freaking phalanges as a kid from frost bite.

Aizen smiled. "Oh, it's not so bad." He glanced upward, like he was pulling words from the clouds. "It's colder, but I think it just reminds you that spring will be back soon." He added kindly, "And I like snow."

If she hadn't been a subordinating officer, Matsumoto would have laughed. Captain Sōsuke Aizen sounding like an optimistic five-year old was simultaneously amusing and charming.

They flash stepped through the remainder of Division One and Two before landing near the central headquarters of Division Three. Aizen spoke up softly, "I suppose this is your stop?"

Yes. Yes, it was. Matsumoto felt a bit sad leaving Captain Aizen—his company was remarkably comforting in a way she couldn't articulate. But she wasn't about to lay down in humility and carve out a plea for another lunch date.

"Actually, I have a request," Aizen started, and Matsumoto stopped mid-step.

"Yes?"

With intent more dark than he let on, Aizen said with an almost questionable smile, "Are you interested in learning Bankai?"

* * *

**A/N: **Aizen's such a little fibber. And so gorgeously asexual. XD

Can I just say Yachiru kicking Matsumoto in the neck is my favorite part? Because I think it's hilarious. And while I'm not a huge Yachiru fan, she's such a little sadist, and that's ENTERTAINING. Gin, you better run for your money, honey.

I'm glad this chapter was lighter than the last three. We needed some funny moments. :)

And weird chapter title, but I did make a reference to whales earlier, so it's relevant.


	15. Part II: Bankai's Broken Arm

**Part II**

**-**

**Six Months Later**

**-**

Matsumoto felt her elbow splinter with a surge of sudden shocks and staggers. She'd never broken her elbow before.

It was one thing to ignore a cut to the side, but arm injuries foresaw a great deal of frustrating complications. She couldn't hold her sword anymore, and it, like her knees, hit the ground in a wave of pain. The ache surged up through her arm, pulsing, boiling, _heat heat heat_ before reaching her shoulder and dulling into her neck.

"Hold it to your body, try not to move it," Aizen murmured gently, drawing back Matsumoto's sleeve and inspecting her wounded arm.

She'd been thrown into a wall because Aizen stepped forward, brandished his sword, and the ending wasn't a tricky one. Matsumoto's metal clashed with a literal god's, and her arm _cracked_.

It'd been nearly half a year since she'd agreed to Aizen's Bankai training, and all she had to show for it was a broken elbow and nothing else.

Progress was supposed to be…progressive, yet Matsumoto was as disappointingly stationary as ever. Her skill remained the same, and somewhere behind her impressive Vice-Captain resume was a hidden ghost of an explanation as to why six months of Bankai training lacked results.

Aizen's brown creased with concern, a hand draped loosely around Matsumoto's wounded arm, the other on her shoulder. "Are you alright?" he asked in a habitually warm voice, sinking comfortably into Matsumoto's psyche as the pain throbbed throughout her arm.

"I think I broke it," Matsumoto breathed, too distracted by the unforgiving pain to diagnose the specificities of her arm's condition.

It took Aizen less than a flash step and a smile before he was standing in front of Division Four, Matsumoto nearby, clutching her arm with as much tact as possible. Surely her arm was on fire, the intensity of the pain so hot it could've roasted logs.

Unohana simply wasn't there, but thirty scrawny looking Squad Eleven targets were.

Medicine held no bias, but when Squad Four medics saw a Division Three soldier in need of quick attention, no one threw aside their coffee break to help Matsumoto. Gin clearly was not a favorite around Squad Four.

Though Aizen was.

"Her right arm might be broken," Aizen quickly relayed, but Matsumoto was already passed him down the hall with various hands probing and prodding her extremely seething arm, yanking up the sleeve of her uniform and probing and prodding away some more.

As tremendously awful as a broken arm was, Matsumoto couldn't deny the smidge of unaccustomed relief she felt, because at least for now, she could rest a while.

Bankai training was exactly what it sounded like. Intensely over-pressured, a whirlwind of technique and orders, and very little breathing room.

In the last six months, she felt no closer to Bankai than she had a year ago. Despite the longitudinal commitment that Bankai training entailed, the first six months were supposed to show some kind of direction as to where the next five to ten years would go. And it seemed Matsumoto wasn't going anywhere.

"_Matsumoto_, your _right_ arm? What the hell happened?" Yumichika squawked, who happened to be in the same room receiving treatment to a nasty looking cut on his forehead.

Matsumoto's brow scrunched and a dull warmth spread through her chest at the sight of Yumichika, who she hadn't had a proper conversation with for almost four months. She grinned, despite the pain of her arm, and said, "Yumichika! Why haven't we gone bar hopping as of late?"

Yumichika, ready, responded, "Darling, you gave up bar hopping six months ago. Are you crazy?"

And he was right, because she had.

In addition to a dozen other ridiculous training requirements Matsumoto had to meet, excessive drinking was the first on a very long list of vices she had to get rid of; Aizen made it clear in an almost obnoxiously tactful manner that he wouldn't tolerate any form of incapacity.

"_I expect attentive training," Aizen instructed kindly, his hands laced together like a zipper. "I'm aware you take after the Eighth, but I'd appreciate sobriety at all times, even on leisure days."_

_Matsumoto hid her total horror with soldier-like endurance. "Captain, is that really necessary?"_

_Aizen smiled. "If I'm correct in assuming you're not addicted to alcohol, it shouldn't be a problem."_

"…_I'm not_ _addicted," she gritted through her teeth, insulted, "I can stop."_

Any further disagreement was better left bottled up.

"Looks like that's gonna put a stake right in the middle of your training," Yumichika started before pausing, "actually, you're going to be a bit useless all around with a dominant arm broken."

"I got the memo, hon, thanks," Matsumoto grumbled, wincing as a nurse straightened out her arm.

"So, how long has it been? Four, five months?"

Matsumoto glanced over. "What? Since I started suicide-training? God, it's been six months. I can't believe it's only an etch in the time I really have to spend training for something I'm hardly motivated to do." She slightly regretted admitting her indifference toward learning Bankai, but Yumichika was only half-listening anyway, a nurse having pounced on his mutilated forehead with gauze and a weird pasty gel.

"Huh, that's something, Matsumoto. And think, only ten more years to go," he said cynically, brushing a set of fingers over his bandaged head. "Well, good luck with your arm. At least you get a breather."

And with that, Yumichika was gone, as well as the only real conversation Matsumoto'd had with a friend in a long while. In a weird limbo, it left her feeling a bit empty, if not a little lost and lonely.

Ever since she'd come in contact with Aizen, or even further back—since she joined Squad Three—an overwhelming sense of disconnection between herself and her friends had surfaced. Nanao, Shunsui, even Hinamori, were transforming into shadows of a past she didn't belong to anymore.

"You shouldn't worry too much, Ms. Matsumoto," a kind, shaky voice entailed, and Matsumoto glanced to its owner—a smaller, skinny looking boy with black hair. He was inspecting her arm with a professional air, holding it lightly and smiling. "I mean, you shouldn't worry about your arm," he explained. "You took a lot of damage to the elbow, but outside that, it should only take about a day and a half to heal fully. Nothing permanent!"

Normally, any soldier would be happy to hear their dominant arm wasn't permanently screwed over; but while Matsumoto was relieved, her relief was mixed with an annoying amount of ambivalence she could neither articulate nor explain.

"So, can I go?" Matsumoto asked, but the boy shook his head.

"If you'll give me just a moment, I need to perform a healing spell—you should be able to move your arm for remedial tasks—bathing, cooking, cleaning, washing—but no heavy lifting for at least two days. Is this your dominant arm?"

"Yup."

"It'd be best if you sat on the sidelines for the next 48 hours. No fighting, definitely no sword usage _at all_. I'll send a notice to your captain."

It took about ten minutes for the Squad Four official to fix Matsumoto's arm up enough to allow her Housewife Duties—just who the hell did this boy think she was? Bathing, cooking, cleaning, washing?—and by that time, Matsumoto was ready to milk her injury for all the gold it was worth. When she entered the lobby of Division Four's infirmary, Aizen was gone, and she was glad for it. She just wanted to go home to her cramped and generally messy third-seat apartment and play comatose for the rest of the day.

She was halfway down the hall to her room when Kira stopped her.

"Did you hear?" he asked carefully, clearly aware there was a definite possibility Matsumoto _had_ heard, and she was consequently pissed off.

Matsumoto, tired, glanced at a clock that read 6:30, and said, "Ugh, please tell me while I crawl into bed and pass out."

"…So, you haven't heard?"

"…No, Kira, or I'd be asleep by now. What is it?"

Kira paused, and instead of the dramatic effect it should've been for, it was instead the outcome of a worried expression. "….Captain Hitsugaya finally found a VC—"

Matsumoto would play no game with informalities today, and she quickly asked, "Who is it?"

"It's definitely a guy. Rumor has it it's a previous third seat from Division Seven."

Matsumoto tried her best to sound interested, because she really was—her replacement was absolutely her business; she had every right to stalk and terrorize the soldier who would potentially erase her influence from Division Ten—but she was exhausted. And her arm sort of hurt.

"Right now I can't even think of who the Squad Seven captain is…Sorry, Kira, I'm beat," she mumbled as she shoved passed him. "I promise I'll show some ounce of concern tomorrow. But thanks for the gossip. I'm proud of you!"

"It wasn't gossip—" Kira squeaked out, but his voice was lost as Matsumoto's door slammed in his face.

It bothered her, as she tossed off her uniform and crawled beneath the covers of her futon, that Squad Ten was cementing a new replacement into its division. Hitsugaya, as amazing as he was, managed to prolong filing his empty-second seat for a good six months, generally unheard of in the military. His squad ran efficiently without a lieutenant because Hitsugaya was made up of his own personal army, so it wasn't so much him not needing a VC as it was no one noticed he didn't have one anymore.

Eventually, Yamamoto threatened to pick one out for him, just like parents did for their daughter's marriage, and Hitsugaya was forced to succumb.

His perseverance was so admirable that Matsumoto almost felt guilty.

There really wasn't any going back now. Not that she wanted to. But the empty second seat was like a "Home Is Where the Heart Is" sign, hanging gently to remind her that she had another home in the Seireitei. Now the seat had been filled and the sign thrown into the proverbial garbage can.

To make matters worse, her replacement was from Squad Seven. Who the hell was from Squad Seven? Who was that captain again?

Matsumoto huffed, pulled the covers over her head, and tried to go to sleep.

But a knock on her door's threshold proved a different story.

For crying out loud. "What?!" Matsumoto snapped, unaware of the imposing reiatsu sinking in all around her.

Through the screen came a muffled, "Heard ya broke yer arm."

Matsumoto tore the covers from her face. "Did Aizen tell you that?"

"'Course."

"Tell me you've brought sake or something that'll help me pass out."

"Nah, but ya gonna lemme in?"

Huffing again, Matsumoto staggered to the door, unlocked it with a flick of her wrist, and didn't even bother opening it before turning back to her bed. "It's open," she murmured, flopping down onto her futon.

Gin stepped inside, his hand closing the screen in a swift motion. "Ya all healed up?"

"Naturally," Matsumoto said with her face buried in her pillow, her voice barely audible. "I'm just like a doll. A few stitches here n' there and I'm brand new." Her disgusted tone was hard to miss.

Gin said nothing because he was good at it. Already he had moved to the cramped side of her futon, staring down at her from the eyes of an amused man, watching, waiting, until Matsumoto rolled over and stared back at him.

"I'm tired," she mumbled.

"Ya look tired," Gin replied.

They stared some more, like locked gazes were their secret language, before Matsumoto sat up slightly and said, "Come here."

Like the scene had been rehearsed, Gin dropped to a knee but was forced to the other as Matsumoto tangled her good arm around his neck, pulling their mouths together in a series of quick, needy kisses.

"God, I feel like I haven't seen you in forever," Matsumoto whispered, still tired but considerably more motivated to be energetic.

Gin smiled, cupping the back of Matsumoto's neck and kissing her again. "Yer an in-demand woman; seems all the captains want ya nowadays." By all the captains, Gin wasn't far off—Matsumoto now had personal relationships with Hitsugaya, Shunsui, Ukitake, Aizen, and Gin himself, which was hardly shabby when considering military bonding was about as hard as digesting a rock was.

"I'm glad today's over…" Matsumoto said, shifting slightly as Gin settled down next to her.

"Ya know what today is?"

"Monday."

Gin snickered into her ear, pressing his mouth to her nape before trailing kisses up her neck and chin, stopping just before he reached Matsumoto's lips. "It's been a year since ya joined my team."

Matsumoto kept silent at first, not necessarily because she wasn't aware, but because she'd started counting the days when Bankai training began—which meant six months to her since anything _really _had changed, not a year. "Already?"

"Mmm."

"I guess that's something. Do I get a reward?" Matsumoto joked, though slightly feeling like she deserved one anyway.

"Only from yer captain," Gin murmured, kissing the side of her mouth. She could feel his smile spread.

They quieted down then. Matsumoto's eyes felt heavy against the exhausting events of the day. "I'm not going to ask you to stay," she echoed, lying on her back and staring up at the man next to her.

Gin smiled again. "Ya don't have ta ask." He leaned in again, his mouth against hers, pressing himself atop her body as his lips ran over her face, trailing a set of soft kisses onto her neck and then onto her collar bone; he breathed gently, stopping just before her breasts and running back up to kiss her mouth again deeply.

Matsumoto smirked into the kiss; when Gin pulled back, she said, "I'm probably going to be something of a tease tonight—Even you can't keep me awake."

Gin showed little sign of relenting, but he slowed enough to prove he wouldn't go as far as both of them would have liked.

"…Ya know, I could train ya."

Matsumoto opened her eyes. "Why didn't you just offer that before I became Aizen's personal punching bag?"

Gin ran a finger from Matsumoto's neck to the start of her cleavage. "I didn't know ya were interested."

That was an understatement and a half. If Matsumoto had learned anything from her experience with Aizen, she was no more interested in learning Bankai than she was staying sober.

For her, she found Bankai a natural occurrence—it'd happen when it happened. Matsumoto was a spontaneous learner who enjoyed a spontaneous lifestyle; yet the uniformed schedule and living of the military surprisingly neither hindered nor fed it. But Bankai, both a spiritual and stratified rite of passage, manifested itself differently through each soldier's soul and sword. Forcing a shinigami to learn it would only work if a soldier felt they were in tune enough to truly find themselves.

"Oh, look at all these captains fighting over me," Matsumoto dramatically gushed, fluttering her eyelashes. "Who needs good looks when all I have to do is train to get a man?"

Gin's grin expanded.

But Matsumoto never did reply to Gin's offer—she'd fallen asleep and didn't stir until ten the next morning.

* * *

Shunsui sat back, amused. "Huh, if breaking your arm really gets you outta work, I'll find a way to crack my forearm in half. I could use the rest."

Matsumoto lounged informally across the plush couch of Division Eight's headquarters, an arm over her face, bragging about the day off she'd gotten as a consequence of Aizen's terrifying strength.

"Ask Aizen. I'm sure he'd split your arm in two," Matsumoto deadpanned, then said, "but I imagine the effect wouldn't exactly be the same." Shunsui's appendages were more like gigantic tree trunks than normal human arms.

Shunsui looked like he might actually consider this, but the wave of thoughtfulness passed, leaving him to stare down at the hill of paperwork Nanao was forcing him to sign. He sighed, sat back in his chair, and mumbled, "My lovely Nanao-chan _will_ break my arm if I don't get these read through and signed. Captaincy is tedious..." He trailed off as he smiled weirdly. "So, how goes Bankai training? Break anything else?"

"Just my pride."

"Oh, that's easily repaired."

"Says the man with no shame." Matsumoto slid further into the couch, removing the forearm from her face.

Shunsui chuckled, signing his signature messily onto a line. "Sousuke's tough. But then so are you, Rangiku."

Matsumoto let Shunsui's compliment go unnoticed. It wasn't that she didn't agree with him, but the Aizen situation was proving a hassle most likely because she didn't want to deal with it. It wasn't Aizen's strength or the severity of learning Bankai but the truth that Matsumoto was not interested in acquiring or training for it.

"Does it show?" she asked suddenly, a smirk of regret curling from her lips.

Shunsui stopped writing mid signature, his gaze cast low. He smiled. "Does what show?"

With a weird laugh, Matsumoto opened her eyes, watching nothing but a blank ceiling stare back at her contorted expression. "How much I don't care."

For a long pause, the only sound in the room was the gentle swish of Shunsui's completed autograph against a piece of paper. Beneath his smile, he could feel a sense of familiarity forming, and he replied with true sincerity, "It's unlike you to say yes to something out of obligation."

Matsumoto's only reply was, "I'm a soldier."

Shunsui chucked. "Refusing a request is not refusing an order, no matter who it's from." He sat back in his seat, his chin tucked in and a yawn framing his mouth. "I'm not without sympathy, my dear. It's unfortunate how bad things look when these kinds of requests are turned down."

Matsumoto hid her irritation under a mask of indifference. "I find it annoying that if I had refused Captain Aizen's offer, I'd be looked down upon. Like my only value is through promotion, not stability."

Shunsui glanced up from his work. "Value is not through promotion, it's through _progress_. I only think it'd look bad because you've been demoted. Showing ambition after you've been kicked in the side is admirable."

"Well, how about this," Matsumoto offered, sitting up with something resembling enthusiasm. "What if I wanted my position as VC back—what if I showed ambition in that direction and not at a captaincy level?"

"Unfortunately," Shunsui began, "it's not a matter of what you want. It's about honor, politeness, and respect; if a captain offers you his assistance, you take it not because you want it, but because if you don't take it, you won't get it again." His advice held stature until his unmoved expression broke for a comical one, "Plus, try telling the old general you turned down a captain's offer. Whoo-hoo, those are not good times ahead for anyone."

Ignoring Shunsui's advice, Matsumoto took interest in a sake bottle in the corner of Shunsui's office, but she abstained for the pure fear that Aizen might do more than break her arm if she indulged. "It's frustrating that the only way for a soldier to go is in the direction of Bankai."

Shunsui nodded. "And where else would you like to go?"

"That's just it—we don't have anywhere else to go," Matsumoto murmured, tipping her head back against the edge of the couch, her hair spilling over languidly. "We're stuck."

"Very interesting," Shunsui said, his head tilted lightly.

It was then that Matsumoto realized the mistake she'd committed.

She sounded like Gin.

In totality, that was Gin's ideology, Gin's words, not hers. Yet she could feel herself assimilating; she saw Gin's view and couldn't seem to find her own.

No, that wasn't it.

Her ideology was now Gin's. She had changed.

Matsumoto swallowed thickly, unsure of where to look (not at Shunsui), and quickly mumbled, "…My arm still hurts…I think I'm going to go."

Shunsui, who had masked his concerned face with an obnoxious straw hat and a large sake bottle, replied darkly, "Come back soon."

Matsumoto would not come back soon.

* * *

A/N: If you didn't get it, the shaky little boy who healed Matsumoto's arm earlier is a younger version of Hanataro. Also, I totally make fun of Squad Seven in this chapter. It's probably the most ignored squad in the series.

The point of this chapter: I wanted to show Matsumoto's indifference to Banaki and how she's beginning to take on Gin's political views. Yay?

I know there are errors, but just be happy I'm updating. : )

Comments? PLEASE?


	16. Get Her Done

It was a rare occurrence when Aizen unwillingly proved his mortality by getting sick. His God-complex fell second in line to the throbbing headache and irrepressible sneezing fits his cold caused, and as a consequence, he was in a particularly bad mood. Sitting at his desk, hand against forehead, he looked almost out of character.

Hinamori had gone to make him tea, despite Aizen's protests of _Vice-Captains do not serve tea, Hinamori_, _but thank you_. He didn't want tea or comfort, and by all means, no _sympathy_, but just a lonely office for one. That wasn't happening.

Maybe it was the cold, but he had little patience for the trouble that his number one subordinate was causing. When Gin entered the room, Aizen gave him a silent glance of irritation.

"Gettin' sick, Captain Aizen?" Gin asked, and whether or not he really cared wasn't the point.

Annoyed at the reminder, Aizen removed his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose with a set of fingers. He ignored Gin's question and asked, "I'm assuming Matsumoto's arm is healed?"

Gin swayed a bit, then said, "Yeah, it's all healed up. Saw her a day or two ago, it ain't hurtin' her."

Matsumoto's unfortunate incident wasn't so much an accident as it was a symbol of Aizen's frustrations with her. If he hated weakness, then he truly abhorred stagnate power; strength that refused to increase was no better than the weakest warrior, and Matsumoto was fitting that description with more clarity than Aizen had patience for.

Aizen could feel the scratchiness of his sore throat as he replied with growing annoyance, "She's weak and irrevocably untalented. She's shown no progress since we started; her broken arm is only a summary of the last six months."

Gin's smile tightened, which somehow meant he disagreed but was in no position to say so. Instead, he said, "She ain't a weak one like the others. She just ain't motivated."

"Then I suggest you motivate her."

Gin's smile expanded across his face. Easier said than done.

As if a response to Gin's attitude, Aizen said with the intimidation of a thousand gods, "I find it interesting that you've spent so much time trying to disconnect the woman from Soul Society that now she won't learn Bankai as a result of your influence." He paused and almost glared. "She is truly useless."

The irony of Aizen's statement was stark. In order to disillusion Matsumoto, Gin had convinced her that a shinigami's worth was only through Bankai and nothing else. And now when he _needed_ her to start training for it, she wouldn't do it as a sign of resistance against Soul Society.

"I'll go talk ta her," Gin reasoned, stepping away from Aizen's wall just in time to see the Fifth Division captain sneeze.

Gin smirked and left.

* * *

Matsumoto tried her best to look remotely apologetic, but instead her expression read something like _I don't have time for this right now_. "I'm really sorry, Nanao…"

Nanao, whose own expression had cashed in its habitual indifference for one of shock, held up a piece of paper. "You're _resigning_?" She traced a finger around the roster's edge, stopping just short of Matsumoto's name, which was now sporting a rather ugly looking black line across its middle. "Just what exactly are you 'resigning' from?"

"I thought it would be obvious," Matsumoto mumbled, pointing at the paper. "I'm quitting the Association."

Nanao's eyebrow lifted as she glanced at the paper again. "Initially most members have a _position_ before they resign, but ignoring that, I've never seen you quit anything that gets you out of work."

There wasn't much of a way Matsumoto could respond to that other than to agree, so instead she shrugged. "I've missed three of the six meetings we've had in the last six months—I'm barely a member nowadays," she explained. "I can't even remember what the point of the Association is."

"There isn't a point, that's the point." Nanao sighed and pushed up her glasses. "Well, alright."

As Matsumoto left Division Eight's facilities, the regret she should've felt just wasn't there. Essentially she had completely severed any public connection with her friends by quitting the Association; Aizen and Gin monopolized her time now, and maybe that was why she couldn't figure out why she didn't care.

She thought then of her life at the Eighth, her journey to the Tenth, and did she ever once think she'd end up here? Hitsugaya's face appeared a blur in her faded memories; it had been barely a year, and already she was losing the comfort and adoration the Tenth afforded her to the cold Division Three and the idolized Division Five.

It left her feeling, if anything, lonely.

"Yer better off without 'em anyway, Ran," a voice answered her sudden loneliness.

Matsumoto stopped mid-walk and glanced over. "What're you doing here?"

Gin smiled and slipped behind her, his arms forming a secure hold on her waist. "Ya sound like ya ain't happy ta see me." He pulled his catch beneath the shadow of a building's overhang and said, "I need ta talk ta ya fer a little while."

"Wow, Gin, you've been AWOL for two days and now you want to talk?" Matsumoto's earlier internal monologue left her edgy and unceremoniously unsocial; Gin, if through extension, was an overdone reason as to why she felt primarily disconnected from her fellow soldiers over the last few months. "Sorry, I don't feel like talking."

She shoved his arms from her waist only to feel Gin's hands reconnect with her wrists. "_Gin,_" Matsumoto warned, "get the hell away from me."

"Aw, yer a poor sport ta-day, Rangiku," he teased, tightening his grip on her wrists with irritation. "Can't ya spare me a minute?"

Frustrated, Matsumoto pulled back. "I will later, I'm sorry."

It was times like these when Gin would typically leave rather than fuel an argument, but Aizen was pissed, the woman in front of him was pissed, and quite frankly _he _was pissed; he only had one choice.

So, he threw coal into the fire. "This ain't a request." Or _I'm still your captain and don't forget it._

Gin's implication was enough to form a solid lump of fury in the core of Matsumoto's throat, and she growled lowly, "I apologize, _captain._"

The intensity of their positions burned uncomfortably through their bodies, Gin's hands still tied to Matsumoto's wrists like an anchor, their torsos unprofessionally close. It wasn't distrust that bogged down their glares but instead the reality of the situation. Matsumoto didn't talk as a sign of her rank; she waited for Gin's actions.

Instead, he pulled them both behind the building.

Gin's smile, once spread from eye to eye, was a less turbulent sea now. He pulled back and said, "Ya ain't smilin' lately."

The impact of his statement wasn't enough to rile up Matsumoto's feelings. She joked, maybe a little too cynically, "Get me some alcohol, I can change."

For a second, Gin seriously considered her request. It didn't last long. "Lemme train ya."

"What?"

"I'll take over fer Captain Aizen."

Somewhere in the Seireitei, Aizen did not look pleased, and Gin knew this wasn't what he meant when he ordered Matsumoto a pep talk.

But something just wasn't _right_.

Matsumoto pushed from the wall, but Gin's hands shot out on either side of Matsumoto's face. She sighed, "Look, my apparently slow progress with Bankai isn't because of Aizen's training. Switching teachers isn't going to change anything."

"I know ya just don't care ta learn."

Matsumoto breathed a laugh then, unsurprised that Gin saw through her. "Don't misunderstand me. I _care_ well enough. But right now, despite Captain Aizen's 'altruistic' guidance, I don't want Bankai training." She paused, then said, "I have more worth than that."

Internally, Gin's psyche grinned, and he said, "I think ya should learn it; it ain't about the fluidity o' worth now." He could only laugh darkly; this entire dilemma was his fault. What would happen if he was to say something like, _Aizen won't take ya if ya ain't useful. The form of yer Bankai is everything! _Would anything happen?

He continued, "Give it a year. One more year, and if it ain't worth yer time, I'll transfer ya. Eighth, Tenth, yer choice."

Matsumoto stared. Her jaw slackened, eyes wide like she'd been stunned, and it took more than a blink to ground her incredulous response. Gin's sudden selflessness wasn't a consequence of a new magnanimous personality. He wasn't telling her something. She knew Gin wanted something else.

Matsumoto's eyes narrowed. "Really, right now," she muttered, "all I want to do is rob the nearest liquor store and get the hell out of the Seireitei."

The acidity of Matsumoto's desire was enough to spark a grin across Gin's face.

She'd given him a brilliant idea.

* * *

It was over the next few weeks that a series of changes took place.

Gin's revulsion of responsibility disappeared as he singlehandedly took over all paperwork and document outreach; he sent Kira on a wild patrol that would take at least two days, and he wouldn't let Matsumoto into his office. Essentially, he wouldn't let anyone into his office, but Matsumoto was a habitual exception, so she became a primary problem.

A second change that perhaps only Matsumoto seemed to notice was the deterioration of her third seat obligations. Her patrols lessened, her reign over the Third's Kage disappeared altogether, and by the end of the week, she was _looking_ for things to do.

It was a forth seat filling out a petition for a promotion that bothered Matsumoto more than anything.

A week later, two fifth seats took over her mundane bureaucratic duties, and it took all of five minutes for Matsumoto to barricade Gin's office.

"What's going on?" she asked, threatened by the current events.

Gin looked up, smiled, and said, "It ain't forever."

"What isn't?"

He stood from his desk. "Yer bein' relieved of yer position."

Matsumoto's heart dropped. "Why?"

Gin's expression was steady. "Soldiers under Bankai trainin' can take up ta two years of leave from the military."

Matsumoto threw him a shocked expression. "Wait—" She paused, like her own words were a foreign language, trying to decipher the situation she'd fallen into, "I'm not leaving the Gotei to train for two years with Aizen—"

Gin shook his head. "Aizen's stayin' behind. I'm trainin' ya from now on."

"What?"

Gin smiled widely. "Ya wanna pack yer things? We're headin' ta District 80."

* * *

**A/N: **I READ _TWLIGHT _AHH. Three books of shitty first person narrative has completely ruined my sense of good writing. I'm still dizzy from her abuse of adjectives and Mary-Sues.

Anyway, sorry if Matsumoto's characterization is not up to par. It's been close to six months since I've actually written her character (the last chapter I posted had actually been completely about six months ago, I was just having trouble ending it.). I'll get back into the swing of things.

(On a less dramatic note, District 80 is where Gin and Matsumoto grew up together in the Rukongai, just in case everyone forgot?)

Please comment?


	17. Aizen's Roulette

**A/N:** As a bit of a warning, the last few scenes of this chapter get a little weird. It's a stream of consciousness style used to portray a character's unorganized frame of mind. So, just be opened minded to some of the stuff that takes place, okay?

* * *

Aizen's Roulette

-

-

-

He told her they'd leave in a week.

"_Why didn't you ask me?"_

It was enough time for preparations. It was not enough time to say goodbye.

"_I'm askin' ya right now, Rangiku."_

Gin arranged the plans without effort. It was a quiet affair; there wasn't a need to notify any other captain outside Yamamoto, Aizen, and Matsumoto's subsequent replacement, and thus the bulk of the Gotei 13 went unbothered. Matsumoto had no one to tell, which rang an echo of pity: she would've told half her friends by now in the old days. But her current position and lack of acquaintances made the old reality look more like a fairy tale.

"_Why the sudden interest, Gin? I'd be suspicious if this type of attitude wasn't your entire character." Her jaw tightened. "What're you going to do? Resign from captaincy just to train me three hundred miles away from the Seireitei?"  
_

It was unsettling. The Seireitei was her militia-endowed home; without it, she was a wanderer, just like her childhood, just like Gin. Although Gin had told Matsumoto that her leave would be just under six months, it didn't help calm the wave of discomfort storming in her gut.

It was obvious District 80 was the last place on Soul Society any remotely sane person would want to live.

But Matsumoto saw the irony that now, after decades of her Seireitei lifestyle, District 80 was more appealing than the military, and that alone was clear enough.

"_I ain't resignin'. It's a six month leave."_

Gin was giving her the option the Gotei 13 wouldn't; he was letting her choose to leave.

"_You can't leave for six months—they'll replace you—"_

Dismal. Weak. Useless. They were the tenants of the Rukongai residents and the ridicule of shinigami. But Matsumoto felt all three: she saw the dismal future of a hypocritical society; she felt weak, she felt frustrated, because she wouldn't change it; and ultimately, she couldn't do it anymore. An enlightened mind was useless to robots.

She couldn't close her opened eyes.

"_It ain't botherin' me."_

"_Are you joking?"_

"_I'm bein' serious."_

_Matsumoto stirred. "Why would you do all this?" _

_The smile hanging from Gin's face was replaced with a look of thoughtfulness. He nodded at her, and silence filled the room._

_-_

_-_

_-_

Matsumoto had always been a dog, in one form or the other, so you could imagine her surprise when she turned out to be a cat.

They lived in District 80 because District 79 could not bare two more sets of skin and bone. Seventy-Nine's orphanages were rare in number, overcrowded, and like most of the district, covered in trash. There were no buildings; there were metal sheets standing erect with rotting fabric draped across, a poor excuse for a house, but at least it was a house.

The rivers were just another garbage can, the fields an extended graveyard, the skies a taunting image of a life they'd never be tall enough to reach. District 79 was as close to hell as heaven got.

District 80 was nothing, and as a consequence, was very clean. It had bandits and murderers and the worst sorts of men, but Gin learned early the alphabet of survival, and so dealt with the men well. He wasn't a good guy, either.

Gin called them dogs; they called Gin and Matsumoto dogs, and it seemed everyone was a dog. Because hunger was unavoidable, and by extension, so was town, they learned early that all adults were low-down, disgusting, self-preserving _dogs_. It was only a misfortune that the adults thought the very same thing of kids. _Just another mouth to feed, beggar-dogs_.

It didn't change when they enrolled in the Gotei 13.

_Military dogs. _

Matsumoto was a dog in poverty, a dog in the upper class, but it seemed her destiny was as a cat.

Her sword took the form of a great feline, its fur the color of her hair, its body a mixture of flame and flesh. Like dusk, it glowed a fierce red-gold, drawn near-perfect as a cat of fire. With every step it took, it left behind scorched ground, a wordless warning of pure destruction and absolute strength. Matsumoto had never been so awed by a creature as the one her sword took, a perfect mirror of her soul.

From that day on, she was a dog only on the outside.

She was _Haineko_.

Almost five days before her departure for District 80, Matsumoto had her last training session with Aizen. He was welcoming and pleasant, despite Matsumoto's indirect refusal of all his training talents.

"You have my deepest gratitude, Captain Aizen, for all the help you've given me," Matsumoto said, her form that of a deep bow.

Aizen, all false-modesty, smiled with an embarrassed expression and replied, "I am only happy you continue your training, even if it must be elsewhere. You are a wonderful student, and I will always wish you the best in all your endeavors."

It was typical mentor-student chat, but it was still well-felt.

"I think we'll try something different today," Aizen thought aloud, unsheathing his sword with a simple flick of his wrist.

Matsumoto watched as Aizen, instead of raising his sword, set it gently on the mat below them. He sat down parallel to it, instructing Matsumoto to do the same. When she mirrored him, he spoke again, "Similar with Bankai, it's important to keep a constant, open connection with your zanpakuto, no matter the circumstance." He placed each hand on his knees before saying, "today will be spent in conversation with our swords, our souls. It will help you learn more about yourself and your future."

It was a conventional reason to avoid physical combat, and so Matsumoto was happy to oblige. She hadn't experienced a detailed conversation with her zanpakuto in a while.

Drawing a small breath in, Matsumoto focused her mentality on the object before her, extending with ease the salutation of _How are you, Haineko_?

When there was no answer, she repeated the sentiment, and received the same reply. Silence.

Slightly confused, Matsumoto opened her eyes and stared at the structure of her sword. There was no specific process to talking to one's sword; it was like talking to a person, it just happened. There wasn't an on/off button, and she wasn't even sure if it was possible for a sword to deny its wielder a conversation; they were the same being in different form.

Thus, Matsumoto tried again. She tried again after that, and then one more time, before a bolt of anxiety struck through her chest.

She couldn't talk to her sword.

_Haineko, talk to me, _she internally pleaded, but there was no dialogue. With concern, she reached out and grabbed the hilt of her sword, and for the first time, she noticed it didn't seem quite alive. It felt rather dead.

Another jolt of panic crossed her heart. _Haineko, where are you? Why aren't you talking to me?_

There was no response. With the experience of a true soldier, Matsumoto drew a third breath and collected her mindset, replacing any erroneous thought with tranquility and focus. But her sword felt as far away as ever.

It didn't feel like her sword. Haineko was loud, vivacious, fierce. The thing before her was cold and unfamiliar.

Thinking back, Matsumoto had noticed a slight depression of her spiritual energy, but she justified that through her fear of leaving the Gotei 13 for six months.

What was happening?

_Haineko, it's me, it's Rangiku—_

Matsumoto had never heard of a sword's being disappearing altogether; she'd never had any trouble talking to Haineko before. She didn't feel threatened at all of losing it until now.

With a rapidly growing anxiety and a festering sense of self-loss, Matsumoto altered her mental route and dove deeper in the recesses of her mind, searching for Haineko, calling out its name.

It took Aizen's hand on her face to shake her from the trance she'd fallen into.

Dazed, Matsumoto opened her eyes and glanced around the room, only to find Aizen's face very near hers, a look of concern not masked by his glasses. He pulled back and smiled, his hand dropping to his side.

"It seems you were in quite a long conversation," he said with sincerity.

Matsumoto's brow wrinkled as she studied the man before her, and it was only now that she realized her face had gone hot from his proximity. She clutched her temple and said, "It wasn't much of a success; I was only gone for five minutes," and she purposely left out Haineko's disappearance.

The look of surprise Aizen gave her was enough to indicate that she was wrong.

Aizen sat back farther. "It's been nearly five hours, I'm afraid."

His piece of news sent Matsumoto flying. "_What_?" she croaked, and suddenly the exhaustion of such an intense spiritual ride finally met her physical form. She slumped sideways, both hands cradling her spinning head. She now had a perfect view of the window, and indeed the once sunny world was masked in pitch darkness.

Aizen was already by her side, his hands on her shoulders. His large frame made her feel uncharacteristically frail, which would have bothered Matsumoto, had not Haineko been bothering her more.

"I thought it was less than a ten minute run—" Matsumoto tried to explain, but she couldn't seem to do much more than state the obvious.

If it had really been five hours, then Matsumoto was truly empty handed. She couldn't find a single trace of her sword's spirit.

Aizen tried to reassure her. Finally, he said, "It's nearly midnight. You're welcome to stay here tonight, if you wish."

Even Matsumoto, the most unabashed, immodest woman in the entire Seireitei, seemed slightly taken aback by this.

Aizen noticed and chuckled. "You're entitled to decline, Matsumoto."

But Matsumoto's body spoke for her, sloping lower in fatigue. Aizen smiled and kindly asked one of his subordinates to find an unoccupied futon. The gesture was kind enough to be genuine, and Matsumoto had no argument against it.

* * *

It was on the brink of unconsciousness that Matsumoto lay in Division Five's spare room, her breathing unusually high, like her lungs were collapsing. The most time-consuming spiritual walk she'd ever experienced stopped at two hours; her five hour run was unfamiliar, if not a complete violation of her mind.

Sweat poured down hair face and neck, soaking the hems of her uniform and the loose strands of her hair.

Without so much as a plan, Matsumoto murmured, "Haineko?" Her voice sounded sore and old.

Her sword, stashed on a shelf just left of the entrance, neither rippled nor spoke in reply. Matsumoto tried again.

She waited for the beast-like cat of fire, whose body heat rang so strongly it was not unlike the hottest summer day; she waited for the flame and strength of her soul, the feline prowess that enhanced her own power. She waited for the light that Haineko's burning form illuminated.

Suddenly, there was light, there was _fire_.

Her breathing quickened and her eyes opened, wide. But instead of Haineko sitting before her, she found that the room was bathed in a set of flames. Startled, Matsumoto pushed from her crumpled position as fire engulfed the room, spreading to every corner, devouring wood and fabric with an insatiable hunger. She wondered briefly if she had caused this, but the severity of the situation gave her no spare time to analyze.

The heat of the room flourished, and with the rising flames Matsumoto tried to stand, but found her legs weren't moving.

"Get up!" she hissed, clawing at her legs that would not budge.

It was a thought of aftermath, but as Matsumoto struggled to simply move, she wondered where the rest of Division Five was. She didn't understand it—if her room was the cause of the fire, there should have been nearly a dozen soldiers just outside now. But there was no one.

The fire was spreading toward her bed now. In the background, a beam broke.

_the fire swims with the skill of water, flooding its path with a burning destruction_

The flames rose up. Matsumoto could not move.

The path of no return drives the normal from her brain the room explodes in a set of red color but it isn't fire it's hatred she's done it to herself the goddamn an-ar-chist, she wants this she caused this, she wants _out _and out through death is a soldier's ace in the hole shinigami are death personified they are _death death death gods _no they are God, because what is God but a set of rules and fear and fire…

Its hot now she can see the sweat tattoo her skin pale skin and Matsumoto sees only a sea of licking flame like whips it promises to kill all things dead and not dead alike it will rage and fury until the Seireitei can fit in an urn

The flames vanish and and and the world is just a white room after the burn she is 95-percent alone no one will notice a violet and she thinks of leaving she needs to find the fire and stomp it out she needs to organize her purpose in the world, in Soul Society. She is shinigami she is soldier she is death

and now she stands before a man her hands move outside her control and she's ripping yanking pulling at the man's black clothes he's a soldier he is he is he is

Aizen.

Let's work on your training, he says.

So Matsumoto trains

she pushes off his captains' robe and scrapes her nails over his neck as Aizen's hands find rest at her waist like some sort of new age gentlemen he unties her sash and pulls back her uniform and it's flesh and skin and strawberry his mouth owns hers and lips bruise and she can't stop, her legs knot around his hips and she sinks into him and claws at his uniform because she wants it _gone_ he kisses her jaw and tongue and body and soon all fabric just isn't there its good its now and she collapses the numbness spreads and he holds her tight his hands run down her breasts and stomach until he stops just at her thighs. Aizen's smile looks like the night sky and he is not done.

He vanishes she is alone.

Where is she? Matsumoto studies her room and the flame that disappeared and she is alone there is no Aizen there is no Gin and she finds solidarity with herself as the one-and-only.

She leaves.

Her room is on fire again, it would be dark but there's so much _fire _and something just is not right she must control the fire she must

If this is her fault if this is her masochism she could stop it she could ring it in and find control and pursue her ultimate potential. She is fire incarnate, she is ash and soot and char. She is the _commander _and this will not ruin her…

The room started to creak and collapse under the intensity of the fire. Matsumoto, her legs no longer rebelling against her will, stood from the futon and said, "Stop."

The room went dark.

* * *

Matsumoto's eyes flew open, her breathing erratic and body shaking uncontrollably.

She groped at her surroundings, searching for the futon, looking for fire and char. But all she saw was the Division Five training room and a worried Aizen staring at her.

"Are you alright?" he asked, leaning forward and placing a hand on her shoulder.

Matsumoto nearly jumped out of her skin at Aizen's touch, the embers of her trance still burning. He immediately pulled back at Matsumoto's discomfort and said, "Are you well enough to continue training?"

Training?

Matsumoto's mind spun. It had all been a dream. But how was that possible? Everything had had such clarity…It was so _real._ Pursuing logic, Matsumoto realized she must have fallen asleep while on her spirit run with Haineko.

_Haineko_.

Remembering the earlier destruction, Matsumoto mentally shouted _Haineko!_, and was met with pure silence.

The death of a zanpakuto was uncommon but not unknown. They could be, in essence, "reborn" through intense communication and spiritual meditation, but that was assuming one's sword had been killed by an _outside_ force.

The buoyancy of a sword that had committed suicide was something else altogether.

Very tentatively, she called out, "Haineko." There was no answer.

Aizen watched her with a gentle curiosity that harbored dark thoughts.

Matsumoto glanced at him, unsure of what to say, when she suddenly felt all energy leave her body as she quietly lost consciousness.

Aizen smiled.

* * *

**A/N: **Please don't give me crap about the Aizen-Matsumoto scene. You're all mature enough to take it, right? Anyway, I've always been a fan of the stream-of-consciousness style, and especially like to utilize it in dream-sequences, because dreams are so confusing as it is. There are no grammatical rules, either. It's awesome.

Only two or three more chapters to go before the end…

Comments?

EDIT//: redid some of the dream scene...


	18. To Uproot and Revive

It was dawn when Matsumoto finally stirred. Division Four was quiet, the low scuffs of sandal and cart alike slowly making their separate routes down unoccupied hallways. The graveyard medics clocked out in time for a day of rest, and the following shift was only just finishing their morning tea.

Dazed and generally incoherent, Matsumoto struggled to gain focus as she reentered a conscious state, her body pleading for further rest while her mind screamed for order. Every limb, joint, and tendon felt drained. Her gaze rocked in and out of focus, the wall before her a mix of contour lines and blurs, before she closed her eyes again.

A hand rested gently on her forehead. Matsumoto couldn't open her eyes enough to address the owner of the cold, and she imagined pale, hand, but she didn't have to.

She knew there was a smile somewhere in the room, and with that thought, she fell back asleep.

* * *

Matsumoto woke in the warm embrace of a futon and comforter, sweaty and sensitive from the overbearing heat. The time of day she assumed was morning, but a quick glance from the fort of blankets provided a black sky. Her circumstance unknown and coherence dizzy and jumbled, Matsumoto pulled the sheet off her head and tried to make sense of where she was.

Gin was seated next to her, his back pressed against a wall. In his lap a stack of paperwork sat uncharacteristically, a brush moving slowly in his hand. He noticed her staring, then smiled, and put down his work. "How ya feelin'?"

Matsumoto's brow scrunched as the dim light pained her unadjusted eyes. "I don't know. Bad. What time is it?"

Her sense of chronology was so disjointed it could've been one in the morning and she would've thought it was time for lunch.

"It's 'bout midnight. Ya've been sleepin' fer a while."

The only light in the room was a low flicker from the small lamp near their futon, casting shadows across the remainder of the area. It was the arrangement of the shadows, a massaged orange glow, that sparked a sense of familiarity. The shapes and curves stretched and twisted, sprawled out like the tips of the shadows were reaching for something.

It looked almost red.

Fire.

The dream seeped into her consciousness like a sponge in water, filling all open space and drowning out any other thought. It wasn't a surprise, yet her anticipation didn't block the dread that filled her aching stomach. The dream had offered a level of intensity Matsumoto had never mentally experienced. There was something offensive about fire, the way it ate and tore and consumed what it did not own; the way it always seemed to steal the life around it. She had never considered it before, but fire as an object was almost arrogant.

She clutched her temples, calming her nerves as she thought of her previously trapped state, her _uselessness_, until another picture flashed by.

Aizen.

Her stomached churned again at the thought of his name. She tried unsuccessfully to study the event with an amused air—Aizen was no potential _anything_ in her life. But there was no blocking out the incensed fire so intent on burning the world to cinders, its raging hate its fuel and power. She remembered with misplaced discomfort Aizen's touch, his hands on her body, their mouths at the other like there was something to be missed in their eventual parting.

She tried to push the image from her mind. The burning room replaced Aizen's form, yet no comfort was regained.

It took her a moment to realize Gin was talking.

"What?" Matsumoto sat up awkwardly, pushing the blankets farther from her body, revealing that she was still in her uniform.

Gin shrugged back in reply, then flicked off the light without any substitute explanation. Matsumoto turned away, rolling onto her side with an intake of air, and came face to face with her sword neatly lying on its side. She froze.

The events of yesterday tore themselves open, and with a heavy heart, Matsumoto remembered the silence of her sword, her one-sided dialogue, and the actualization that Haineko was gone. The empty feeling in her chest returned, and she ground her teeth together hard.

_Haineko_, she internally ordered.

The silent reply wasn't surprising the second day around.

Matsumoto draped a forearm across her eyes and brow in frustration, a basket of questions hitting her at once. Who would she tell and what would she do, who could have done this and how did this happen were among the group that perpetually formed, because they had no answers, no conclusion; the plot was nowhere near its climax. She struggled to remember the last time she'd spoken with Haineko, but she came up with nothing.

Anger swelled through her shoulders and up into her neck, and with a resentful attitude, she glanced back at Gin, whose form she could make out slightly in the dark. She resolved to fix this, to find her lost sword whether it be dead, alive, or something much worse. She wouldn't feel whole until she did.

Somehow Gin, with all his unexplainable sixth, seventh, and nth senses, could feel her tension. Half-conscious, he lazily placed an arm over Matsumoto's waist and pulled her closer, his face brushing Matsumoto's hair before he effectively passed out.

Matsumoto tried to appreciate the comfort, but she eventually forewent any possible sleep that night and ended up shrugging off his arm as a result. The remnants of her thoughts focused on her deceased sword, a piece of her being, and the fact that she could call out forever and never receive any form of reciprocation shook her bones.

There was a possibility Haineko's condition was unknown to the outside world. Her sword had remained sheathed, its power locked away, just another fancy version of a stick in hibernation. Its current state was known to her only.

_What are you going to do?_

_God, I don't know, just shut up!_

Grabbing her sword with a vice-lock grip, she slipped from the futon and hurried out of Gin's room, breaking into a run the moment her foot met the wooden hallway. It took less than five minutes to reach her living quarters.

She'd seen it done before, the revival of a sword. Somewhere some years ago one of Shunsui's zanpakuto had been blown asunder, and the only sure thing was that it was dead and its parts were dead. As a fresh transfer, Shunsui and all his powers, work-related and _not_, were still new to her, and over the next few days she half-way witnessed the revival of his tattered sword into a gleaming zanpakuto.

However, Shunsui had locked himself in a room for three days and didn't come out for any of it, and thus the technicality lied there. She hadn't actually seen anyone heal anything, but the intense spiritual power was concentrated thick around the room, and she could only conclude that Shunsui was having one hell of a spirit walk.

It was worth a try, but even then, Shunsui had _two_ swords that apparently talked to him regularly.

What had happened in her dream was clear enough. What remained clouded was the dream's timeline. Had she actually fallen into a trance or was her trance part of the dream?

With patience and care, Matsumoto unsheathed her sword and set it before her folded knees, angling the hilt toward her body with the tip pointing toward the east. Sleep pulled at her eyes, it yearned for her obedience, but Haineko's absence disturbed the very thought of rest.

She had no blueprints, nothing to base a strong session of meditation off of. With frustration she tried to recall Shunsui's efforts and thought more than once about asking him, but their last conversation nearly a month ago had not disappeared. She could not rely on him.

Falling back on meditation practices for spirit runs, the first thing to go was visual, then sound…

The dark of the room made the surroundings easier to forget, and the quiet of the night focused her concentration on the steady fluctuation of her breathing. Whether it was her lack of sleep or the meditation process, she was able to disconnect from her physical surroundings quickly, her body relaxing, shoulders lurching forward gently.

With effort she tried to illustrate the creation of her zanpakuto, the excitement and anticipation that came gratis when a fresh-faced shinigami got her first sword. The picture formed clearly enough, resurfacing from the lake of memories she'd collected over her lifespan.

Matsumoto saw herself, barely a physical teenager, standing awkwardly next to Yamamoto, who didn't seem to notice or relatively care about her. Her uniform fit her chest but hung from the bone and skin she called a body; her hair fell just above her shoulders, her face was brushed with a warm glow, and her eyes never lost the determined sort of ferocity she still had today. She stood alone; Gin had graduated years before she had entered the Academy—but at her side the shadow of a sword was placed, silent yet beaming in one swift package.

"_Your zanpakuto has shown itself to you?"_

"_Yes, sir."_

"_Call out its name, child."_

"_Haineko!"_

It was the first time she'd ever called out Haineko's name; she didn't realize until now that there was a limit on the number of times it would call back.

It was like Haineko's birth was a gateway to her mind, for the flood of the past broke through, and Matsumoto remembered everything.

Her subsequent graduation, her Eighth Division assignment as a tenth seat, seeing Gin again for the first time in nearly a decade. It reemerged with such clarity and effectiveness that before she realized it, she wasn't thinking of Haineko anymore.

The first time she'd ever met Shunsui, she had thought he was a homeless man camping out in a captain's uniform. The way he threw his feet on the desk, slept half the time and skirt-chased the rest of it, introduced her to an entirely new definition of appropriate captain behavior. For sure, his magnanimity and pacification were not the traits of a homeless man, and very soon she was welcomed into the world where holding your liquor meant more than killing any hollow.

Comfort ensued; she enjoyed her life, because what was prestige to sake bottles and all nighters? She was such a kid, new to nearly everything like some true innocent, but she loved the Eighth and its insobriety.

It wasn't until later, when she was very much a woman, that she saw Gin again.

Their status as acquaintances dissolved as the intense desire for the other cultivated, and soon she found him not as her family but as her lover, mixed in a world of Gin's position as vice-captain and his privilege of outside authority. The memory of first seeing him again as a grown man, tall, shoulders wide, was still a shock; he wasn't the little stick of a boy with a pained belly anymore. Every step he took was a tremor of power; he was the original prodigy all grown up.

When they met again, it was a flutter of excitement and yearning, a want of the other that far transcended the occasion pat on the back or words of encouragement.

It was late that night, no soul awake to sight the deed, and it was only a coincidence that Matsumoto found Gin alone, asking for a recount of the good old days. What started out as a friendly talk became a friendly hug, and after that, any pretense of platonic undertones washed away with their reserve. It was their first kiss together, which transgressed into a night of much more, and neither wanted to go back after that.

Their relationship was a hidden one that somehow everyone seemed to know about.

It was ironic that Gin, despite all of Matsumoto's adult suitors, was eventually threatened by a kid.

Matsumoto remembered her transfer to the Tenth, a sordid, almost depressing event as she decided to try on the badge of a vice-captain. Shunsui bid her farewell with all the tact of a nuclear bomb. She brought to the Tenth the ideology and attitude of the Eighth, along with a record number of alcoholic beverages and questionable practices. Gin, who hated Shunsui, was as thrilled as the singular line of a smile could translate. Matsumoto was considerably less thrilled.

She was a second-in-command decades before Hitsugaya had even graduated the Academy; when she saw him again as a full-blown captain, it took her at least three weeks to wipe the amused expression off her face.

_Hitsugaya._

Matsumoto then shook from her reverie, forgetting the past as she thought again of Haineko, her broken, dead, sword.

But her mind, unsettled and restless, flashed again to Hitsugaya. She glanced out the window.

She tried unsuccessfully over the next few hours to revive her fallen sword, but the only results were frustrated scowls and clawed temples.

At three in the morning, physical exhaustion defeated her mental persistence. She crawled into her futon and begrudgingly went to sleep.

* * *

The next few days she packed her things for District 80. Nearly all her duties as a third seat were gone, taken over by eager subordinates interested in moving up. She showed little sign of ambition or earnestness, but despite Haineko's state, she wanted to leave. Tired of her situation, she wanted to be alone for a while.

Kira said goodbye politely enough, smiling with a bow, but it couldn't hide his aloofness, and to a lesser extent, jealousy. When he was gone, Matsumoto turned back to her things, which amounted to uniforms and not uniforms. There wasn't much room for anything else outside the essentials; in District 80 the only people to accessorize for were bandits and murderers.

She ate dinner quietly alone, pushing her soup's solid components around with an uninterested expression. Eventually she gave up on it altogether and nudged it off to the side.

"Not hungry?"

Matsumoto, her chin resting on a propped up arm, sluggishly glanced over.

Hitsugaya was scowling at her.

She hadn't been expecting him, ever, and it showed. Her expression transitioned from shock to an unfamiliar rush of pleasant surprise, and with a smile she hadn't flashed in months, she exclaimed, "Captain!"

Hitsugaya smiled lightly and replied, "It's good to see you again, Matsumoto."

It seemed impossible that a near year had passed since she'd really talked to her former captain, and yet it seemed more so a decade had really taken place. Their mannerisms, even physically, were unfamiliar and out-of-tune, but it was forgotten the moment the conversation sparked.

It was an unexplainable relief to see that Hitsugaya looked exactly the same, a result of his disdain for his boyish good looks, his hair and even his facial expression both unchanged. To her it said _the Tenth's still the same_, and to an even more symbolic extent, _It's waiting for you to come back_.

A sign he was planning to stay for a while, Hitsugaya sat down and said, "How is the Third?"

The Third. Unsociable. Killjoy. Honest. What could she say? Instead, she shrugged and came up with a lame anecdote on the similarities between Kira and dogs. It kept the conversation going, but eventually landed on Gin, as it always did.

"I know you're leaving with him," Hitsugaya responded, and the phrase sounded so entirely incorrect the way he said it, like somehow the connotation had changed to something _wrong _all together. He was saying, _I know you're running away_.

Matsumoto was quick to counter with, "I wasn't aware Gin had told anyone."

And she wasn't. She had asked Gin for silence on the subject, not out of embarrassment, but because she wasn't entirely interested herself.

"He hasn't. But the subject release forms…"

"Go through the Tenth," Matsumoto finished, her automatic reaction a relation to her previous vice-captaincy position. It couldn't have stayed unknown anyway; Gin's leave would cause a stir in the gossip reel eventually. But she couldn't get passed the feeling that Hitsugaya was examining the situation beyond a normal captain-subordinate level.

"How did things with Aizen go?" Hitsugaya asked, unintentionally causing a rather R-rated image of their 'training' to flash through Matsumoto's head.

Matsumoto went into boring detail regarding Aizen's earlier technique and qualities, though she left out their final training session and brought up instead a fake story of final farewells.

Eventually, she said for solely clarification purposes, "I'm not unhappy." She paused. "About leaving again."

Part of that statement was a lie, and they both knew it.

Hitsugaya leaned back thoughtfully. "You do seem to lose your job quite a lot."

Matsumoto frowned heavily, though she had to smile; hell had frozen over—Hitsugaya had made a joke.

They talked for a few more minutes before Hitsugaya started to stand. Matsumoto's brow raised, and she exclaimed, "You're not leaving already, are you?"

Hitsugaya gave her the answer through the strange expression on his face. He nodded and said, "Good luck, Matsumoto."

Matsumoto was now standing as well. She crossed her arms, ignoring Hitsugaya's farewell, and replied, "I haven't even asked how the Tenth is."

"Then ask."

A smirk captured Matsumoto's mouth. "How's the Tenth?"

Hitsugaya mirrored the smirk, and as he turned away, said over his shoulder, "Absolutely terrible." The smirk turned into a smile, and he averted his gaze to the direction he was walking in. His captain's robe trailed behind him but stopped with his body just at the threshold of the exit.

He looked back and murmured, "You're leaving for six months, but don't forget to come back, Matsumoto."

Matsumoto, now truly without a home in the Gotei 13, division-less and stripped of rank, wasn't sure she could fulfill his request in the end. As a silent apology, she stared after his form until the ten on his back became nothing in the distance.

* * *

**A/N: **Yuck, school's back, I have no motivation for anything. ;o Break was so nice to me…. Onto relevant things, this chapter was a bridge, so District 80 will be next. And as a purely sentimental tangent, I really had fun picturing Gin tossing his arm around Matsumoto when he's clearly half-asleep. They are so adorably monogamous.

I know I sort of just made Matsumoto's past up, but I guess anyone really has the liberty to in fanfic. The Eighth just seems right for her. Age-wise, though, I'm still a little hazy. Gin and Matsumoto's generation is older than Nanao's generation, and is even more so older than Renji, Hinamori, and Kira's generation, so I tried to place it according to that. It's weird to think they all look they same age but weren't even at the Academy at the same time.

Comments? Concerns? Cookies?


	19. A District Called Eight Oh

Matsumoto was an inherently positive individual, but today she couldn't adopt or even condone any form of remote optimism. When they left for District 80, only Nanao said goodbye, because Shunsui wouldn't; as a rule, Nanao did what her captain did not. Yet Nanao's farewell did little more than remind Matsumoto of why she was leaving in the first place, and ultimately, she would have been better off without it. The two women studied the other with an air of disappointment before Nanao propelled forward and produced a tightly sealed bottle of sake.

"I know you're still in there," was all she said before she left. Matsumoto got the meaning, stung a little, and then shoved the bottle into her bag without a thank you. To anyone else, the sentiment would have seemed embarrassing, if not inappropriate, but there was something to be said when Nanao smuggled you alcohol.

Miles outside the Seireitei, Matsumoto could feel an unjustified sense of abandonment mounting in her chest. She couldn't explain the feeling, because after all, she was the one doing the abandoning, so it was more akin to a runway's remorse. Slowly the abandonment transformed into a blend of apprehension and uncertainty, and for a second, she was sure she'd gone crazy. District 80 was no vacation home. What were they doing?

Gin was slightly ahead of her, his captains' robe trailing behind him. When he looked back, he only seemed to look at Matsumoto rather than the home he was leaving behind. In a way it was comforting, but at the same time District 80 was not a welcoming future for either of them. It contained painful, disgusting memories of eternal stomachaches and cruel bitterness.

Every hour that passed offered a change in scenery, and it was for the worse. The outskirts of each district managed to elevate in dirtiness and poverty, and by the time they reached the lower districts, towns were nothing more than wooden sheds and beaten stands.

"You know, District one or two would've done the job just as fine," Matsumoto said thoughtfully, though the annoyance in her voice was hard to miss. "Do you remember District 80? If not, please try and picture the desolate lands of absolutely nothing but mountains, rapists, and stupid children who think they can live out there."

Gin slowed and bargained with a dark grin, "I'll kill the rapists if ya kill the mountains 'n the children." But Matsumoto could barely roll her eyes in response.

"I don't even think Zaraki comes out here anymore."

"'Course he does. It's like visitin' grandma," Gin said sardonically, and no more was talked of after that.

The sun was setting by the time they reached the mouth of a dark, rather unappealing forest. Its spiritual level was as calm and constant as a heartbeat, mediocre at best, but Matsumoto couldn't help but pray they weren't living in there. Gin answered her prayer as he introduced their destination just beyond the end of the forest, and they set off flash stepping through the corridors of trees.

_Living_ there. Matsumoto hadn't lived with Gin since her adolescent years, though she spent enough nights in Gin's Third Division quarters to know she was lying to herself. But it really wouldn't be much of a lifestyle: habitual training absent of squads, patrols, and entertainment sounded no more appealing than swallowing a knife. She didn't even know where they were staying; the mountain crevice they slept in as children was just as inadequate now as it was then.

The forest was thick with dying trees; it was close to the end of fall, and nearly every piece of vegetation standing above four feet was half-way gone. When they reached the end, a wooden gate stood still, waiting for them.

Somebody actually lived there?

"It's up this way," Gin instructed, and together they moved quickly up the slope of the mountain until a large, feudal-style wooden house sat before them.

Matsumoto, temporarily bewildered, could only say, "Why didn't we know about this two centuries ago?"

"Because it wasn't here," was Gin's only reply.

Leaves littered the decks and patios of the wooden house, stripped of a human's cleanliness. It was painfully clear no one had lived there in a while. But despite its unattended atmosphere, the house was not unlike a piece of art. Mahogany wood, the frames of the doors, the artistic design of every staircase…Who could've possibly abandoned this house?

Gin would know. After all, he killed the owner. But that's for another time.

Matsumoto walked across a deck, staring over the railing into a long drop of rocks and water. Her reflection stared back, but the image had the most tired eyes, waned lips, and furrowed brow. That was not her. Shaking her head, Matsumoto glanced back up and saw that Gin was waiting for her.

"Wanna have a look inside?" he asked.

The inside was better kept than its counterpart, a few cobwebs and dusty mats, but still relatively clean. The ceilings were built high in an almost untraditional style, and as they explored the house, the rest of it seemed rather out of place as well. Unorthodox paintings covered the walls, so old that Matsumoto could not decipher the figures, and the wooden floors often transitioned into stone before returning to their mahogany form.

It was getting late; they chose rooms and went to sleep, or at least one of them did.

Matsumoto lay staring at the wall, her eyes transfixed on Haineko. The empty feeling in her chest ached for its heart back, but when she called out her zanpakuto's name, there was no answer but the wind outside. The despair in her body spread throughout like a disease, tearing at her mentality with exhaustion and confusion.

She was beginning to regret her silence on the matter, but if she had told someone, she wouldn't have known what to say. How Haineko died, when, where; it was all a blur. The hilt was healthy, the blade as sharp as wit, yet the spirit was unexplainably dead. The thought of killing her own sword was so disgusting that Matsumoto couldn't bring it from the depths of her mind to contemplate. How could she say, _I killed Haineko_?

It was getting cold, and for the first few hours, the autumn night didn't let her forget it. The house was helpful in no way, either. She was old enough to fear nothing, but the paintings on the walls, even in the dark, seemed to analyze their sleeping guest with a ghostly presence. Matsumoto glanced back at her sword.

She was starting to feel betrayed. Eventually, Matsumoto pushed the covers from her body and murmured, "Are you awake?"

From the other side of the thin paper wall, a sarcastic "No" was heard, followed by the sound of a muffled curse word and a weird yawn.

Matsumoto turned to the wall, her head flat against the pillow she slept on, and said, "Do you remember how you died?"

The concept of dying was a flexible one; death in the human world was essentially birth in Soul Society, and like a baby couldn't remember the day it was born, a shinigami couldn't remember the day he died. Even with an adult consciousness, the ability to reason and analyze could not save the memory of one's last living day. It was not unlike a blur or a very distant dream.

Matsumoto could not remember her death as a human. The lines were unfocused and incoherent, a bunch of tangents that eventually led no where. There was no penalty for forgetfulness; no one ever remembered.

However, Gin did. He died from a snake bite, and only then did Matsumoto wonder if zanpakuto were supposed to be ironic.

"Ya know how it happened," Gin murmured, because he'd told her two days after they met as kids.

There was a long silence for a while, and just when sleep was settling in, Gin asked, "Ya remember that cave we slept in?"

It sounded primitive the way Gin provoked such an old memory, his diction, the "cave", his tone. He wasn't wrong though, because while "mountain crevice" sounded more exotic, a cave was more or less what it really was. Cold, uncomfortable, dark, wet, hard….home.

Matsumoto replied that of course she did. She remembered the chilled floors against their empty stomachs, the moldy smell, the claustrophobia of crammed quarters… The walls of the cave, sharp and jagged, cut her arms and calves like a punishment for their inhabitance. Yet even with the cold, the cuts, and the hunger, it wasn't the cave's worst characteristics. No, it was staying there by yourself.

"You were always gone," Matsumoto murmured, the annoyance, and to a further extent, the bitterness, still present. "I hated you for that."

Gin didn't answer immediately, because while the circumstances had changed, the results hadn't. Gin was still gone all the time. "Back then, I wasn't bein' mean," he tried to reason, "ya could take care of yerself."

Matsumoto sighed. "That wasn't the point."

Even as a child, self-sufficiency was her priority. She could scrap and dance with the best of the bandits, so in the end, it wasn't independence that she craved. It wasn't the necessity for sustenance or the desire to climb the economic ladder. Instead, it was what the orphanage kids had, the rich kids had…

She wanted a friend.

It was the reason she followed him, why she waited, and how she came to be. Gin was her friend.

"I came back," Gin defended, "Ya know that."

Matsumoto could feel the bitter taste of disagreement mounting her tongue, because Gin rarely came back, and what's worse, he never took her with him. It wasn't until their Academy days that Matsumoto realized how truly mobile Gin was.

"God, you know what's weird?" Matsumoto thought aloud, smirking. "I see you a lot more now that you're a shameful adult than when you were a sweet, nice little kid."

"I can think of a few reasons why," he said with a large smile.

"I know you're smiling."

"I think yer smilin', too." And she was.

Gin was a better lover than a friend, because as a lover, he _was_ her friend, and he came back to tell her that more often than their childhood days. It helped that Matsumoto returned the same feelings, and so they started a century long love affair that had no destination.

Matsumoto's smile sobered as the thought departed, and slowly she glanced back at her sword. "…When did Shinso first talk to you?"

Gin was thoughtful for a silent beat, contemplating a truthful reply while simultaneously keeping his honesty in check. Finally, he replied, "Two days before I graduated."

In a chronological sense, Gin was on a sugar high. When he said, "two days", it was not relative to the normal five years a person spends in the Academy. He virtually entered and left in a proverbial flash, comprising a year of climbing rank and power like no one had ever seen. He was the prodigy, the kid-sensation….the phenomenon. And then he was gone.

"You barely looked thirteen," Matsumoto whispered, her thoughts gone from Shinso's first appearance. Gin's skinny arms and legs, his weird smile…He never even got a chance to gain some weight before they pulled him. Especially now, a tiny Gin was unfamiliar next to the tall, toned captain she was currently sharing a house with. If the military had done anything, it had robbed them of childhood while simultaneously giving them one. Without the Academy, they would most likely be dead.

Tired and chilled, Matsumoto grabbed a blanket and stood from her futon, leaving the room for Gin's area. His body was a limb of the shadows, and without a light, Matsumoto found entrance and slipped beneath the covers of his bed. Like Gin's mind was an extension of hers, he tangled a set of arms around Matsumoto's waist and back, molding their bodies together with the warmth of the futon. His breath hot against her neck, Matsumoto finally replaced Haineko's death with thoughts of the man next to her, and she fell asleep.

* * *

**A/N: **Yes, I wanted it to end that way. Anyway, is anyone still there? I can't believe it's been a month, I officially have been negligent and for that I truly, truly apologize.

Quick Plug: HanyouHitokiri's got a cute GinRan serial fic out if you're craving awesome plot with Aizen and cooks and tailors. No, for serious, it's going to have a great complex story line and amazing character interactions, so check it out!

Comments? You can yell at me about the awful lack of update, too. : )


End file.
